Category: Information Technology

Innovation or Efficiency

Posted on by Idexcel Technologies

New digital technologies offer a plethora of opportunities for businesses to improve efficiency and increase profitability. The digital economy is transforming businesses all across the globe – be it retail, healthcare, hospitality and beyond. However, the rapid pace of technological advancement has put the businesses into the crossroads of the dual mandate. Companies are grappling to continue to execute efficiently while incorporating innovation through newer technologies. There is a need to constantly innovate to renew the core business, while maintaining the quality of products and services to the existing customers, and for the emerging markets.

There is a need to be efficient, and stay innovative or creative at the same time. To stay competitive and to maintain this delicate balance, the change inside the organisation must be faster than the change outside of it. If the process building for innovation takes too long, it can kill the spark, putting the company at the risk. However, if sufficient time is not given to brainstorm, research and share ideas as a team, the innovation will not happen.

Many companies have been struggling with the same dilemma for several years. There are opportunities to partner with their clients on new emerging technologies such as mobile, social, cloud and analytics. However, there is also a need to constantly renew their core business of application services, infrastructure management, systems integration and business process service. After a great deal of market analysis and research, the Three Horizons Model (3H) for portfolio management has been derived where a company is seen as a portfolio of businesses grouped together according to their growth characteristics.

Horizon 1 is the core business that provides the bulk of cash flows and revenue, and the focus is to defend and extend this core field. Emerging opportunities such as business process services, business consulting or infrastructure managements are promising businesses and fall in horizon 2. And finally, all the mobile, social, analytics and cloud offerings, new market segments, new geographies and new service delivery models are grouped in Horizon 3. This model demands a great deal of discipline and effort to make it work, however, once successfully implemented, it can yield great results for the company. To ensure the success, the company needs to grow all the three horizons concurrently, ensuring complete discipline about allocating resources across the horizons.

The process building for efficiency is quite different from that for innovation. To create a good balance, it is essential to build processes that make companies more effective and at the same time figure out a way to ensure that innovation is allowed into the mix. Clearly, every business needs both, a focus on innovation, and a focus on efficiency. Gore, 3M, P&G are good examples of companies that have managed to do both quite well simultaneously. Companies that can formulate a balanced strategy will thrive, and companies that focus entirely on efficiency or innovation can easily become one trick ponies.

How To Regain Your Leadership Confidence – Idexcel Leadership Roundup

Posted on by Idexcel Technologies

1. How To Regain Your Leadership Confidence

Business can be tough. Business can be especially hard for the leader of an organization who has lost their confidence in their ability to lead. Leaders have the hard task of setting vision, unifying the team, and building structure. When a leader loses their confidence these tasks and so many more like them can become more difficult and can cause major issues in the organization. Read more…

2. Project Freedom (or: Liberate your Low Performers)

As team leader, you probably are familiar with the following situation: A member of your team is not really at his or her top performance. He may be wicked smart. You might have fought hard to get him. You might like him on a personal level. But for one reason or another, things are not working out. So what should you do? Read more…

3. The 4 Most Creative Kinds of Leaders

In today’s snappy corporate speak, forms of creative leadership are like statement blazers or ultra low-rise jeans: they’re either in or they’re out. Every year, the most popular business magazines claim that a certain type of person is the most innovative of the moment. This month, it might be the triumph of the technological guru. In the fall, it might be the rise of the artistic genius. Pundits treat innovation strategies as if they were fashion trends, hot during one season only to turn pass the next. Read more…

4. What Successful People Know that You Need to Learn!

This might surprise you, but success is all about structure. As a matter of fact, we do not get better, we do not change our behavior, and we do not become successful without it! Yet, most people don’t. Not only is having and utilizing structure a challenge, but you have the added test of incorporating the right structure – meaning a structure that fits the situation and personalities involved, including yours. Read more…

Outsourcing- Finding the best Business Partner

Posted on by Idexcel Technologies

Across different businesses and functions, organizations are confronted with multiple challenges. Operating in the global environment where the dynamics expand and shift relentlessly, concentrating on all the business processes may lead to compromises in the core competencies. However, some priorities stay constant across different businesses, and one such business choice is Outsourcing. Outsourcing is a major strategic decision which involves weighing the benefits against the consequences and entrusting the business processes to external vendors. It is encompassing functions closer to the core business, offering economic and strategic benefits. Outsourcing is gradually gaining popularity as a critical management lever to improve competitive advantage, business innovation and customer relationships. Cost reduction is usually the most oft-cited reason for outsourcing, and to some extent, service or product improvement as well, however, there are several subtle benefits which are not so easy to quantify.

The benefits of outsourcing are not limited to any particular industry or domain, and outsourcing partners can design and implements systems that best fit any given business, their ambition and their budget. Businesses can dodge expensive overhauls due to scalability of outsourcing. There are several reasons to outsource, and some of the most common benefits are:

  • Cost Advantage
  • Access to state-of-the-art capabilities and skilled resources
  • Improved organization focus
  • Increased Efficiency
  • Access to resources unavailable internally
  • Freed-up available internal resource
  • Accelerated Re-engineering benefits
  • Savings on Infrastructure and technology
  • Time Zone Advantage

What to look for In Outsourcing Partner

Outsourcing is a boon for many enterprises as it enables them to concentrate on what they do best. However, to reap full benefits of outsourcing, consider the following guidelines:

  • The most important step in the decision for outsourcing is to identify whether or not it is something you need. It is tricky, however if you have identified the tasks and processes you need to outsource, you are in the right direction. Once the needs are defined, you need to dig at the specifics of each business function that needs to be outsourced so that the goals and objectives of outsourcing can be clearly identified.
  • An important consideration while choosing the outsourcing partner is to see if their business aims and objective match with yours, and the partner is able to clearly understand your business objectives.
  • Service Level Agreement (SLA) lays out key deliverables in writing and is a good way to compare the offerings of different service providers. Look for hit rates to understand if their targets are the accurate representation of the actual service.
  • While communicating with the potential outsourcing partners, you need to communicate how business functions need to be done, what is the budget, expectations of the results and turnover time.
  • Seek proof of proven skills in the key areas. Ask for references to find more about the service quality, support and deliveries.
  • Ensure the financial stability of the partnering firm. It may be helpful to find out details about directors, managers, their qualifications and their experience. This information will enable you to gauge the worthiness and credentials of the firm. Visit the partner’s workplace to ensure that they have high-end technology and best-of-breed infrastructure that are relevant for your project. This will also help you better understand their methodologies and processes.
  • Outsourcing partner should have good networking with the high-end suppliers that provides easy point of contact for all technical and non-technical requirements. The products recommended by the partners should fit the businesses well, and decision should not be based on maximum commission that the partnering company gets from its suppliers.
  • The outsourcing partner should be able to provide reliable service desk support whether it is a quick advice or an underlying technical problem. Due to economies of scale, it is cheaper to outsource, than to have onsite employees. However, the outsourcing partner should be able to provide complete visibility to the raised tickets, and convenient access to the service desk staff.
  • The staff of the outsourcing partner should be able to communicate in the same language as good communication can assure good long term relationship.
  • Ensure that “24×7” involves around-the-clock help from the trained engineers if required, else the support given will be of the answering machine, or unknowledgeable call center staff.
  • Ensure that the account manager has the essential skill and knowledge, and is willing to have personal face-to-face meetings to cover targets and areas of improvement
  • To boost the relationship between the in-house and service provider’s staff, scheduled visits can help understand key processes and products better.
  • Clarify the inclusions of support package and ensure clear terms for transparent billing.
  • The service provider should be able to give right to jump the queue in case of critical scenarios. The cases should be prioritized based on operational impact.
  • There must be a reliable and proven management platform so that the systems and be analyzed and rectified remotely. In-house tools may not have been tested thoroughly, and resources might be more concentrated on development rather than providing services.
  • The service provider should be able to accurately forecast and anticipate the growth in the business, and be able to scale accordingly, without losing the focus on service.
  • Great workforce can lead to great partnership. For any outsourcing partnership, look for the staff award, workplace accolades and other indications that employees in the company are given competitive environment and tools for professional growth.

Once the research is complete, form a special team to conduct the evaluation of the few finalized outsourcing partners, and prepare a plan for Request for Information (RFI) in order to gather the essential information. Once the shortlisted vendors submit their request for proposal (RFP), you can start the evaluation. After all the details are obtained from the service provider, choose the company that is most closely aligned with your outsourcing objectives. It is also important to keep the internal staff well-informed about the participation of external vendor as their cooperation and support is mandatory for the successful integration and materialization.

How Modern Code Generation Works

Posted on by Idexcel Technologies

In the recent years, web applications have seen dramatic enhancements in the features and user experience, and this has raised the bar for all kinds of software applications. Even the corporate management expects that their internally developed applications should include the latest features, and also support industry standard technologies and platforms. To meet these raised expectations, the developers come under tremendous pressure to produce the best in the least possible time. Businesses are limiting budgets, and shrinking in head counts. In the midst of limited resources and mounting expectations, the developers must find ways to improve productivity, reduce development backlog and migrate projects to the latest technology standards.

With such pressing conditions, writing unnecessary code is painful, and a waste of time. It can be quite unproductive for any organisation to use senior development resources to work on time-intensive, low-level hand coding tasks. At the same time, there is usually insufficient junior staff, and even when they are available, they may not be trained enough for coding or code reviews.

IT departments can address these problems by investing in reliable tools that are easy to use and can automate and manage the development process. Application generators are the code generation tools that offer significant advantages. Application generator helps create application programs that can run on a particular platform. These generators take basic set of inputs and jumpstart the application development process by generating basic code which is more bug-free and reliable as compared to the hand-written code. This also makes the testing and bug-fixing much easier. Sophisticated application generators deliver code which is consistent with the pre-decided set of functionality. Additionally, these generators can generate complex web pages including reports, forms, filter and several other advanced navigation features. The generated code is comparable to the one written by the senior developers. Passive code generators create code and then have nothing to do with the project. Active code generators create code and keep track of the generated code during its lifecycle. The modern code generators are capable of:

  • 1. Starting from scratch with an application-specific data model
  • 2. Creating comprehensive functional applications that link everything and deliver executable, bug-free applications as a base
  • 3. Generating source code native to the target environment or platform
  • 4. Providing easily modifiable and well-organised source code
  • 5. Preserving customizations and modifications during subsequent application regenerations

Modern code generators mainly fall into three categories:

  • Templating– One-shot code generation, supported in editors and IDEs to some extent and code can be easily edited
  • Round-Tripping– Code is generated to be edited and the edited code can be re-imported into the generator
  • Compiling– Binary code or source code generated is not intended to be edited

Additionally, code generators can also be classified as:

Database Script Generators – They write incremental script to create and update relational database model based on the given model.

Application source code generators – Create code in any particular programming language to work with the database. The generated code includes classes to manage database access and to publish the access layer as Web service.

Code generation process is iterative, developers can add databound controls, user interface pages and databases tables to the application in any order. The generated base classes can be customized, and existing or third party code assets can be imbedded. Effects of changes can be easily seen by just regenerating the application at any time. With each new iteration, all the extensions and customizations are automatically preserved. Some of the most commonly used code generation tools are:

  • 1. Acceleo- An open source code generator that allows developers to use model-driven approach for building applications. It provides tools for code generation from EMF based models, and allows incremental generation so that users can generate a piece of code, modify the generated code and regenerate the code without losing previous modifications. Acceleo allows code generation from any kind of metamodel compatible with EMF like UML1, 2 etc. It also allows customization of the generation with the user defined templates and generation of any textual language such as Java, C, Python, etc
  • 2. Actifsource- A model driven software development to create any graphical editor for the domain models. A comprehensive design and code generator tool that covers domain driven software development. It is Eclipse-based, multi-user graphical tool, and offers sophisticated multi-model support
  • 3. Altova MapForce – Any-to-any graphical data mapping, conversion and integration tool which maps data between any combination of database, XML, XBRL, EDI, EXCEL, flat file, JSON or Web service. It instantly transforms data or auto-generates data integration code
  • 4. Spring Roo- Easy to use productivity tool, it is much more than a code generator. The code is automatically changed when changes are made to the Entities. User just needs to give commands, and Spring Roo does the rest
  • 5. RISE- A software application that operates on a RISE model and produces some kind of output. RISE model contains entire life-cycle of the data model, and code generator translates this into an incremental database specific scripts. Additionally, RISE supports C#(.NET) and PHP
  • 6. MyGeneration- Fairly straightforward, flexible and simple tool written in Microsfot .NET. It is good for generating code for ORM architectures. The database metadata is available to the templates through MyMeta API
  • 7. CodeSmith Generator- Template driven source code generator that automates the creation for application source code for any language (Java, C#, PHP, VB, .NET< SQL etc.)

Few other code generation tools are Visual Paradigm and Netbeans IDE to generate code from UML, and Netbeans IDE and MS Visual Studio for editing/generating GUIs.

Modern code generation tools can help develop code for today’s complex applications framework. These generators produce high-quality output which is maintainable and consistent. Code generation tools abstract the code design, and multiple outputs can be generated from a single application functionality model. This also relieves the development team so that they can focus on other strategic-issues and high-level design work. These tools help reduce the time and cost of development.

Staffing Trends – Digitization, Flexibility, Passive Hiring

Posted on by Idexcel Technologies

Top performing employees are vital for the success of any organization and companies are under constant pressure to find the right talent, at the lowest cost. Innovative recruitment techniques and technologies are emerging almost every day, and any company can find the high quality talent by employing right tools and strategies. Hiring budgets and volumes in the recruitment industry are perfectly poised for the upward swing this year, and talent acquisition leaders are getting ready to scale their operations. Recruiting leaders are getting smart, and are using data driven technique to find the top talent. Some of the recruitment trends for 2015 are:

Digitization
The explosive growth in internet and use of social media has made the world smaller, and more transparent. What eBook did to paperback, digitization is doing to resume/CV. For recruiters and hiring organizations, it has become much easier to find the candidates, and gather more professional and personal information about them.

In 2015, the traditional resume will fade away to some extent, and writing will be more on the digital wall. The static profiles in resume will be replaced by dynamic content which is maintained online. Candidates are using several URLs for controlling and sharing what they have done, what they are capable of doing, and showcase their talent, capabilities and knowledge via blogs and other channels. Additionally, 2015 will witness a more candidate-friendly and human approach for applicant tracking as compared to relying on algorithms and keywords to match skills and experience. Mobile-optimized format, machine learning adaptive algorithms, Big data etc. all are becoming an integral part of hiring trends in 2015.

The cliché “Who you know is more important than what you know” is seeing a turnaround as well. Digitization makes it much easier to find “what you know”, and Internet is changing the old networking concepts. The first-hand contacts and networks are still important, however, the relationships and introduction are moving online.

Flexible Staffing
Another emerging recruitment trend is the gradual shift towards a more distributed labor model, which is flexible, and can respond to the changing business requirements. To improve the hiring process and quality by lowering cost and maximizing time utilization, employers are collaborating with temporary staffing firms to find talented and skilled workforce. This helps them find the right talent, and stay productive. Before committing resources to the new hires, employers can hire through staffing firm on a trial basis to ensure a good fit not only for the job, but also for their own organization. Skilled and professional flexible staffing solutions firms can help employers save money and time in the long run. These firms can be used to hire highly skilled individuals capable of handling critical projects in virtually every industry as these firms have broad networks, and extensive database of resume from skilled local professionals. Flexible staffing firms can conduct the initial screening, interviews and reference checks on behalf of the employer. Employers that staff flexibly by employing a mix of temporary and flexible professionals will be able to navigate well through both good and turbulent times.

Additionally, there are lots of other costs associated with hiring permanent employees, such as health benefits, compensation insurance, and unemployment taxes. These additional expenses and the complexity of hiring will lead to increased usage of flexible staffing arrangements that help organizations quickly fill in vacant positions, without the obligations associated with full-time employment. Some of the major advantages of flexible staffing solutions are:

• Reduced Cost
• Reduced Vulnerability
• Increased Job Satisfaction
• Better Resource Allocation
• Evaluating Potentials
• Wider Choices
• Avoid Burning Out

Using Talent pool for passive hiring
People with right capabilities and skills stay high in demand, but low in supply, and stiff competition stays the biggest challenge to hiring. Hence, recruiters are using the talent pool reports to quantify the supply and demand for the right skill set. There are vast majority of professionals who identify themselves as passive candidates, and can be a top recruitment source for several talent acquisition leaders. 2015 will see a leap towards closing the gap between active and passive candidates. Recruiting passive talent requires different set of skills, and recruiters must be trained in finding the right channels to source candidates, crafting personalized messages, and presenting the opportunities in the organization as a much more than just a pay raise.

Talent Brand
A step forward for the organizations in the year 2015 will be proper funding in recruitment, and measuring their talent brand, which is the public, social version of the company brand. The research shows that if a company has a strong talent brand, the turnover rates can be lowered by 28% and cost per hire can be reduced by 50%. Strong talent brand in place also significantly increases the ability to hire good talent. The companies will have to benchmark their talent brand budgets against other human resource investments to fund the talent brand as per their priorities. Employees can be leveraged as the talent brand ambassadors.

2015 is going to be a competitive year for hiring professionals, and tapping into the key recruitment trends will ensure that they can keep up with the hiring demands and competition. There is no lagging behind this year.

Web Performance – A Critical Success Factor for eRetailers

Posted on by Idexcel Technologies

Since the rise of online shopping in the late 1990s, we have seen many evolutions in the underlying technology infrastructure and in consumer expectations. The rise of broadband access in homes, businesses and the advent of Mobile surely have placed the ‘Online Channel’ ahead of other retail channels.

In a recent survey it is found that, around 80% of shoppers will research online before making a purchase, and they hop across devices to suit their needs. And, 3 in 4 shoppers will abandon the site if the site does not load in under 3 seconds. These are staggering facts and these user behavior and expectations have serious consequences for an online retailer with an underperforming site.
Let’s look at some of the facts that are making ‘Web Performance’ a critical success factor for eRetailers (Online Retailers).

Fact 1: Need for Back-end IT integration and providing a ‘Seamless Experience’ to the end customer
The rise in the ‘Online’ channel did not eliminate the need for other B&M channels, but it only made it very important for the retailers to maintain a consistent messaging across all the channels so that the consumers sees ‘One Brand’ and not multiple competing channels. This has been proven by a recent survey conducted by ‘Sterling Commerce’ and ‘DemandWare’, in which 85% of the respondents expect a seamless experience across all the channels. So, to project a ‘One Brand’ image and to meet the customer’s expectation of ‘Seamless Experience’, the retailers must integrate the back-end IT landscape. This integration brings in a lot of advantages such as:

  • A single view of the customer and Products
  • Continuous state of interactions
  • Opportunity to optimize processed and run insightful analytics
  • Consistent Messaging and Branding

This means that an immense amount of data has to be gathered, collated and presented. Additionally there are many process intensive actions. Adding all this data to the webpage is going to bloat the page size, consume more CPU and Memory and impact the overall performance of the retailer’s website.

Fact 2: Increase in Mobile and Social Media adoption in consumers
The trends in Mobile and Social Media also indicate that there is growth in the retailer presence and sales through these channels. For example, the sales from Mobile devices will reach 37% of the total online sales by Sep-2013 as compared to 17% a year back. Also, the number of Smart phones and the shopping apps on them, are on the rise.
This means that the retailers not only have to provide a mobile enabled retail store but also have to support the various makes and models of the devices and types of operating systems on these devices. The app has to perform better on all the combinations and if it does not, users have apps-stores and mobile browsers at their finger-tips and can jump to a competitor’s store in a flash!

Fact 3: Rich User Experience demands of the consumers
Online customers want a rich and engaging experience, but at the same time, they love their websites to perform and respond quickly.
The retailers really want to meet or exceed the consumers’ expectations in this area. They do Channel Integration, Customized Recommendations, Product Review/ Alternatives/Comparisons, Interactive UI, Video Demonstrations, Past history of the customer purchases and Social Media integration. In fact, the average web-page size over the last few years has grown tremendously. The average page size has crossed 1MB with over 100 objects per page.
The page size along with any 3rd party code integration is surely going to have a negative impact on performance. Here are some examples of the impacts of underperforming online retail sites:

  • A study of a travel website shows that 57% of the users will abandon the site if it does not respond within 3 seconds.
  • 60% of the mobile users expect their site to load in under 3 seconds, if it does not load in under 5 seconds, 74% of the users will abandon the site.
  • 79% of the online shoppers who experience dissatisfaction are likely to no longer buy from that website again
  • 46% of the dissatisfied online shoppers develop ‘negative perception’ of the company. With ease of access to various social media, the ‘negative perception’ propagates quickly and can damage the company’s reputation and brand image, in-turn impacting prospective sales.

Conclusion:
Surprising as all these may be, the financial implications of the user impatience are even more shocking.

  • Slowing down the page load by just one second could cost Amazon $1.6 billion in sales each year.
  • Almost 3 billion searches are done on Google each day and 95% of Google’s revenue comes from advertising. Slowing Google’s search results by just four tenths of a second could result in a loss of 8 million searches per day, meaning they’d serve up many millions fewer online adverts.

This is how important performance of the website is. Poor web performance cost retailers:

  • Loss of loyal customers
  • Loss of Brand Reputation
  • Loss of revenue (because of fewer page visits, Higher page abandonments, less customer satisfaction and fewer conversions)

The bottom line is “Poor online retail site performance = Poor user experience = Less time on site = Lower conversions”. When conversion of a visit to a purchase online is where the money is for the retailers, Web Performance Matters!!

Note: Please go through the webinar we conducted recently sharing a holistic approach on technology, process & tools to leverage in achieving a “world class web performance” for online retail store fronts.