The Good The Bad The Appraisal

Generally there are four seasons – summer, winter, autumn and Spring. But there is also a fifth season for many of us. It’s the Performance Appraisal season. This season brings happiness in few and disappointments in others. Some have the fear of losing out on their Appraisal; some enjoy the appraisal with confidence enthusiasm. Whatever the reasons maybe, the performance appraisal season is where everybody is busy working to complete their projects and fulfil their Key Responsibility Areas.

Appraisal season is generally a stressful time for the employee and an equally tensed for the managers. The face-to-face confrontations, the discussions and finally coming to a common understanding.

Necessity:

For effective evaluation of the employees, performance appraisal is necessary. An individual is evaluated against the objects and standards that are set at the start of the year. Performance appraisals are a must for an individual; to plan his career and for an organization as a whole.

Appraisals become a much easier task if the managers meet their team members one-to-one and have discussions on their performance round the year. Discussions on work, career, projects, hobbies, likes and dislikes helps the employees to relax and makes the appraisal process a less daunting task.

Appraisals are important for a persons’ personal as well professional development. Accountability brings in a sense of responsibility. Appraisals bring in the feeling of accountability for the staff and the organization on the whole.

Application Development and Management

Our Application Development and Management Practice is broadly classified into :

-          Products

-          Solutions

We have developed several products in-house and they are serving very large customers.

Our Product Range include

-          Arowana Risk and Treasury (ART)

-          Staff Travel Management System for Airlines (DART)

-          Hotel Reservation & Booking System 

-          Credit Risk management Solution (Under Development)

Our Solutions are developed around your existing investments and we routinely undertake simple to large and complex projects to develop and deliver, cross platform solutions spanning almost all verticals.

We work closely with Industry leaders. We are an Oracle ‘Platinum’ Partner and we have a Gold Status partnership with Microsoft. We are competent in Microsoft, Java Technologies and Mobile Application Development. We are also adept in Oracle technologies such as RICE components, ADF and OAF for customizing Oracle ERP solutions and building ‘bolt-on’ modules.

We have several reference sites to showcase our abilities. They are too numerous to be listed here.  For one of the largest airline Company we have provided a Uniform Management Solution which was tightly integrated with their ERP solution. For a Large bottling plant of a very popular soft drink, we have developed a ‘Order and Delivery’ module, which was again integrated with Oracle SCM Module. This solution also interfaced with the Handheld devices used by the sales team.  Similarly we have built an iPAD application for one the region’s largest Stock Exchange to enable brokers and other subscribers to conduct their transactions in real time in a secured manner. 

To learn more about the solutions that we offer please click here :- Solution

Our Domain expertise stretches across verticals and Industries. We have supplied Software Solutions and products to

-          Telecom

-          Banking and Financial Services

-          Retail

-          Airlines

-          Manufacturing

-          Real Estate and Master Developers

-          Healthcare

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Why You Can't Stop Checking Facebook

You probably don’t need a raft of academic literature to tell you that checking Facebook can be bad for your state of mind.

But if you were doubting the effects of social media on your mood, there are plenty of studies to enlighten you. Maria Konnikova recently rounded them up for the New Yorker, including findings linking Facebook use to decreased life satisfaction, (ironically) loneliness and envy. Facebook can even cause trouble within relationships by stirring up jealousy.

Given this depressing litany of effects, why do so many of us find Facebook so hard to quit then?

Two psychologists at Austria’s University of Innsbruck recently looked into the phenomenon with a series of studies and came up with a simple but compelling possibility as to why we find social media so hard to resist: We’re really bad at predicting what will give us pleasure.

No Meaning, No Pleasure

The researchers kicked things off with an experiment to confirm the existing consensus on social media. Does it really make us unhappy? A simple survey of participants’ mood and recent Facebook use showed exactly what was expected. Browsing the site brought people down.

Next, the team recruited three groups of participants. One group was asked to play around on Facebook, another to browse the internet and the last to act as a control and do nothing in particular. All three were then given surveys that measured both their mood and how meaningful they felt the activity they engaged in had been. Facebook not only had a negative impact on mood but was also described as not meaningful by study subjects. In fact, it was this feeling of having wasted time on something utterly pointless that lead to the lowered mood of the Facebook users.

So far, nothing too shocking, but the kicker is the final experiment. For this last study, the researchers asked Facebook users to predict ahead of time how happy going on the site would make them. Turns out, they were wildly optimistic about the effects of social media on their moods.

"Users seem to wrongly predict the emotional impact of using Facebook," one of the researchers, Christina Sagioglou, explained to Fast Company. "It seems likely that users are not aware of the mood-decreasing effects."

How Facebook Deceives Us

People are notoriously bad at predicting what will make them happy in many areas of their lives, but we may be particularly prone to making errors of this type when it comes to Facebook. For one, the site plays on our fundamental -- and very powerful -- need for human connection, but there may be additional factors involved. Other studies have shown that while actively communicating on social media (say posting on your wall or responding to someone’s else’s status update) is generally viewed as meaningful and has no mood lowering effects, just passively viewing others’ comments and pictures feels empty and depressing. When we start typing Facebook’s URL into our browsers, we’re often recalling active use but only planning to idly browse.

"Basically, it is passive consumption of other people's information that is considered a waste of time and thereby lowers our mood. Less of that thus seems advisable," Sagioglou concludes.

So next time you’re thinking of popping over to Facebook to clear your head, recall this research to remind yourself just how meaningless you’re likely to find the experience after the fact.

Source: http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/why-you-cant-stop-checking-facebook.html

Mobile Application Development

It is now becoming increasingly obvious that a Brand’s perceived image and control of the Brand is moving rapidly away from the Organization which owns the Brand and into the hands of the consumer.  Today’s consumer is predominantly tech savvy and uses smart phones and applications to consume services and an intuitive Mobile Application can thereby propagate a brand.

In the services sector, the Mobile Application is becoming more relevant due to the convenience factor, access and the speed of delivery. Mobile devices are now an extension of our personalities and preferences. It transforms the way people consumes and exchanges information, impacting every industry, process and business paradigms forcing ways and means to re-define, re-engineer and re-imagine the way we do business.

In the world of Finance, Hospitality, Travel and Entertainment, the Mobile Applications have clearly established their purpose and suitability. They are known to be hardy, secure, very reliable and cost effective. As a result other verticals and Domains are following suit and finding out that Mobile applications can indeed transform business models and turn traditional methods on its head in Advertising, Sales, reach and service delivery - all at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods.

The success stories are too numerous to list or ignore. If you are in services or sales and need to attract customers, service and retain them, then a suitable set of mobile applications can make the difference between an awesome customer experience and disappointment. The interaction with a Customer is now 24x7 and happens globally spanning time zones. When combined with the computing power unheard of, these smart phones now seamlessly interact with GPS, Camera, Social Media, compass, Gyroscope and other devices and applications. Organizations are now forced to re-imagine their business process to harness the power of smart phones and it’s capabilities and come up with innovations that can synergize and catalyze their products and solutions.

At Arowana we can help you develop unique cross platform products that will perform on various mobile platforms such as Blackberry/ Android and IOS.

We have an enviable list of customers who have used our services and developed applications that have enabled them to achieve very high levels of customer satisfaction.

The development methodology follows standard protocols and there is a constant interaction to ensure that both the UI and UX conform to high standards. Our Support process enables you to keep the Application evolving and the end products are developed in a flexible and scalable manner.

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Within Large and successful Organizations the Corporate Treasury Department manages corporate
finances, and ensures judicious use of surpluses in Investment/ deposits and Money Market operations
and also raises cost effective finance for the Organization’s short term and long term operations. Apart
from these functions, the Treasury Department is also responsible for carrying out the Board’s directive
with reference to third party financial arrangements. In many Organizations, the lack of a proper Risk
management solution exposes the organization to several external influences. There are many Treasury
solutions in the market today. Many of them comes with innumerable bells and whistles, making the
product unwieldy, expensive, costly to maintain and also difficult to use or manage. ART (Arowana Risk and Treasury) from Arowana is the need of the hour. It is a straight forward Treasury and Risk Management solution that is easy to learn and use, which addresses the Organizations risk concerns and ensures that the agreed policies are practised without deviation and appropriate checks and balances are in place to protect Organizations cash assets and financial exposure.

ART is suitable for all Organizations, involved with day to day Market operations in the Money Markets and Currency Markets. ART interfaces with ERP solutions, Business Intelligence and Dashboard Applications, which means that the day to day operations of your Treasury desk is transparent and can be monitored effectively.

FEATURES OF ART:

• Addresses all Treasury management and reporting needs in a single, streamlined system
• Improves security coverage, portfolio accounting and performance measurement
• Helps eliminate redundant entries and reduces errors
• Connects to clearing banks to off er integrated Treasury processes from the front- to back-office
• Provides a real-time, online system that gives up-to-the minute balances and exposure status
• throughout the day.
• Fixed-Income Module- an accounting system for fixed-income securities that is designed to comply with local regulations.
• Money Markets - a collection of funding options for the institution and its clients.
• Investment Management - functionality that includes real-time portfolio accounting, reporting and management services
• Safekeeping- functionality that provides online, real-time information, transaction processing, and customer statements and reporting.
• Sales and Trading- a module for executing and managing securities transactions, providing immediate position updates, event notifications and integrated online reports
• Similar modules for Foreign Exchange, Equities and their Derivatives.

Key Features

• Improves security coverage, portfolio accounting and performance measurement
• Allows automation of internal processes
• Automatically integrates transactions into general ledger, asset and risk management systems
• Keeps local regulations-compliant records with a minimum of human intervention
• Allows users to easily generate a range of compliance reports and statements
• Gives users the ability to customize the accounting system to improve their business
• Commits to flexible terms and interest rate structures
• Links directly to depositories and custodian banks
• Offers online trade approval, with automatic calculation of broker and sales commissions and automatic generations of confirmations

Technologies:
ART is designed in Java environment. The output provided to the ERP systems can help the ERP business users to automatically generate vouchers and update the underlying General Ledger. ART is fully configurable and takes into account various intricate aspects related to the core treasury business. The Treasury Manager can configure business rules in the system, dynamically as per ever changing business demands. The proposed software solution will be the key to control the process and quality of treasury operations.

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Corporate Security Application

Corporate Security Application allows Etihad Airways (EA) to automate the current manual process of ID Card Management, Car Parking Stickers, Airport Passes & Security Key Management which will cover all relevant EA staff & contractors who are entitled or want to request these services from the Security department. Also, there will be a Master Maintenance Admin which maintains the master data used in all the above Modules.

Corporate Security Application contains:

·    Web based pages to maintain the master date used in the all the Corporate Security Modules. This acts as Corporate Security Administrator.

·    Web based pages to create/view service requests for ID Cards, Car Parking Stickers, and Airport Passes.

·    Web based pages for security administrator to enter, key details, building details, check in and check out details for EA staff. 

·    Web based Pages for approval of requests.

Basic Business Needs:-

Corporate Security Application provides features that satisfy the following basic business needs.  The Application will address the following;

Masters:

1.      Master Search page.

2.      Masters update page.

3.      Masters Details Page.

Corporate Security Modules:

Home Page to view for EA staff

·         ID Card request page

·         Car Parking Sticker request page

·         Airport Pass request page

·         User can request for self or on behalf of employee or contractors.

·         All the above pages have user details at the time of request creation.

·         Web based notifications to Approvers

Home Page for Security Administrators

·         Building maintenance page to add/edit details.

·         Keys details management page to add/edit details.

·         Area details management page to add/edit area of access details

·         Approver details management to add/edit approver details

Challenge:-

Automation of Requisition

One of the major features of this module is to provide an intuitive and comprehensive system to facilitate the requisition of items and provide the central repository for storing access detail information for ID cards, parking stickers, airport pass and security keys. Users should be able to create requests for self or on behalf of others.

Automation of Approval

As part of the requisition, the approval process will be automated. Approvers will get notifications of the requests through Microsoft Outlook or Oracle work list to action by Approving or Rejecting or Returning to the requestor to rework.

Automation of item issue      

Once the request is approved and items are available on stock, the Security Administrator will have the provision to issue items against requests.

Technology Stack:-

Oracle Apps, jDeveloper-9i, Work Flow, Toad.

 

Solution:-

Using a small, highly-efficient project team Arowana Consulting worked with Etihad to build a new application for all the modules.

To meet the tight deadlines, the implementation team utilized a phased approach and released the different build versions for testing.

Phase 1 mainly focused on designing the application structure by mapping to the data base and completion of the basic flow of the application. This allowed the team to test the application for the efficiency of the application.

Phase 2 and 3 was more of enhancing the basic implementation and deployment of advanced workflow into the application to automate the process of requisition, approval and issue.

The end-users were able to provide there feedbacks through frequent demo sessions for each and every phase of development and implementation, which assisted us in providing hands-on training sessions, experiential learning and educating the end-users before the solution went live. This helped to ensure that the solution was closely tailored to the executive team’s needs, and both the business and IT stockholders had a clear understanding of the solution.

Benefits:-

·         User friendly front end application which will help the end user when operating the system.

·         Role based responsibility helps in the process of approval.

·         Automated the process of requisition, approval and issue by sending workflow notifications.

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Solving the mystery of the shopper

Rosie walked into a posh 5 star restaurant. Her friends order what they like on the menu, but when Rosie sits to dine, she is not thinking about what to eat. She carefully scans the restaurant, checking the ambience, furniture, lighting and décors. She’s timing the restaurant staff, checking toilet paper in the bathrooms, looking for dust on shelves as well as making sure her steak is cooked to order and her Chardonnays chilled. She’s finicky and pernickety, a little obsessive, perhaps, but it’s all in a day’s work. Rosie's biological name is not revealed in order to protect her identity, she is a professional mystery shopper — part critic, part undercover spy, part consumer advocate.

Rodger was shopping at a large retail store, he noticed an innocent looking customer beside him. But Instead of a shopping list, he notice her carrying handwritten notes about the appearance and cleanliness of the store. She's been timing the progression of the queue on her phone. He was puzzled, he had just spotted a mystery shopper.

With online marketing at a fast pace progression, as more and more spending takes place online, the demand for mystery shoppers is growing.
Retailers look for a services and an experience as good as an online, when they set foot in a physical store. Mystery shoppers are meant to walk into a store, analyse the store and provide a detailed feed back. The customer feed back is then implemented. It is not a service offered for a company but for shoppers and shopaholics everywhere. 

Mystery shopping is tricky in fact, if one has to walk into a mall which is approximately 502,000 square metres with more than 1200 shops to explore, it is certainly not easy. A shopper will have a lot to remember besides he or she must provide a focused, detailed- oriented and articulated report about the store or restaurant they visit. 

One of the leading real estate company which invests and develops properties, provides property management services and engages in hospitality services, decided to hire mystery shoppers for their services. The master developers also have large malls to add to their accounts. Which were rented out to boutique outfits. With time the shop owners started facing maintenance issues which were reported to the Developer. The Developer then felt the need to develop a system which will manage all customer concerns thereby improving customer (shopper) satisfaction.   

Mystery Shopper Management tool developed by Arowana for the company. The system has a survey model, which defines what information and improvement factors the client company wishes to measure. These are then drawn up into survey instruments and assignments that are allocated to shoppers registered with the company. 
The Solution termed as “Mystery Shopper Management” system provides a mechanism for organizing, maintaining, and tracking the resolution of issues that cannot be resolved at the individual level at the retailers level. The approach consists of issue control mechanisms and a well-defined process that helps in identifying, addressing, and prioritizing issues in centralized and secure manner.

What the Mysterious person does on the system:

Shoppers are often given instructions or procedures to make the transaction atypical to make the test of the knowledge and service skills of the employees more stringent or specific to a particular service issue. For instance, mystery shoppers at a restaurant may pretend they are lactose-intolerant, or a clothing store mystery shopper could inquire about gift wrapping services. Not all mystery shopping scenarios include a purchase.
While gathering information, shoppers usually blend in as regular shoppers at the store being evaluated. They may be required to take photographs or measurements, return purchases, or count the number of products, seats, people during the visit. 
MSM application allows its users to create observations based on Division, Asset, Building and Department. The observation moves through different statuses these can be seen under different modules based on the current status.
The agents login with their user ids and passwords. The system has an agent dashboard which will show him details of all his entries. He can add details,edit it, and update his observations.
Based on these observation the company makes changes at their stores. 

Mysterious Features:

• Online Shopper Registration and profile management.
• Create/ Amend Observations (Issues)
• Facility for Admin to moderate submitted observations
• Workflow functionality to channelize the observation between Agent (Shopper), Moderators and Department (Resolution owner)
• Resolution Tracking and Reporting.

Mystery alters the service: 

A mystery shopper would spend about two to four hour evaluating the store and giving detailed feedback about the store and its service. 

If you were to ever walk into a huge mall like Dubai mall for instance with over 1200 shops and having an amazing customer experience, there are mystery shoppers working on giving you the best shopping experience.

MSM- Mystery Shopping Management system, a solution to improve retail service. 

Read more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_shopping

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