Mobility services

Just a few years ago there was still minor percentage of the usage of mobile phones as in comparison to the present age. Today Smart phones are beginning to transform the way each one of us engage in our daily lives. A stunning statistics from a United Nations report stated that “More people have access to mobile phones and internet than to clean water.”

Customer usage of phones is rapidly shifting toward increased screen time with entertainment and social media. The usage of mobile devices such as Smart phones and tablets has now become a rapid proliferation of mobile technology. A mobile device with accompanying applications has begun revolutionizing the way customers communicate and way business gets done. Not only are customers spending more time using their phones they can’t seem to put them down.

Arowana’s Mobility service has been appreciated for its portability and convenience of a quality mobile application. One can have an extensive experience with various types of applications. Every client has a different target market, budget and functionality requirements, based on these criteria’s we build a mobile strategy for our clients. 

Arowana has a focused CoE team for mobility, which builds solutions for various industry segments. The team strategizes the design, test and implementation of the right solution for the customer. A complete Mobile Application Development Services, with focus on Utility and location based services, Productivity applications, Entertainment and Games. These services span the entire mobile application development cycle from initial design and architecture, development and integration into existing systems.

Setting high standards in developing cross platform mobile applications that are light, user friendly and has intuitive interfaces, used across many verticals like Hospitality, Real Estate, Property Management, Retail and also Stock Exchanges and other Banking / Financial institutions.

Both business and consumers demand innovative and out-of-the box mobile applications that provide sophisticated user experience. The solution is delivered with better UX across various crossed platforms, retaining and enhancing the UX for an enterprise application. Every application developed by our Mobile application development team we make the technology come alive with a nice to have platform. 

Today, business treat mobile as a “must- have”, offering and have adopted a mobile-first strategy. As the time advances so does technology, that is exactly what Arowana offers quality technology delivered in your hands. Now business can be done in a smart way.

Internet of Things

With three billion people moving into the world cities in the next three decades, the world needs tall buildings and tall buildings need elevators. DR. Rory Smith, Director of Strategic Development for Americans ThyssenKrupp Elevators a leading global manufacturer speaks about maintaining over 1.5 million of these machines annually and keeping them running safely and reliably which is their job one. They wanted to better compete in their industry by offering dramatically increased uptime. So they took preventative maintenance a step further to predictive and even preemptive service. They teamed up with Microsoft and CGI to harness the internet of things. Using this technique they have raised the bar of elevator reliability to new heights that is the internet of dis-interrupt things, which is here right here, right now.

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the interconnection of uniquely identifiable embedded computing-like devices within the existing Internet infrastructure. Typically, IoT is expected to offer advanced connectivity of devices, systems, and services that goes beyond machine-to-machine communications and covers a variety of protocols, domains, and applications.The interconnection of these embedded devices is expected to usher in automation in nearly all fields, while also enabling advanced applications like a Smart Grid. This is exactly what ThyssenKrupp Elevators had adopted; they joined hands with Microsoft to control the working of their elevators they connected their data and sensors to cloud. Microsoft cloud dashboards enabled them to get a real time view of key performance and power BI, so they get to know which cab needs service and when. Live data helps them to find out an issue before a breakdown happens, reducing costs for the company and for their customers.

Internet of Things can be applied in any industry no matter how big or small, for it reduces a lot of manual work load, error and is faster way of working and  managing things. Heath care and hospitals use IoT to decrease manual work of Pharmacies and nursing time.  KUKA an industry which makes 830 car bodies in day are able to produce a car body every 77 second. The Internet of Things is a game changer for the retail industry. The Internet of Things enables retailers to interact with customers in new ways, empower their employees with devices and tools to better serve their customers, and run operations more efficiently. The Internet of Things also makes it possible for brick-and-mortar retailers to have access to the kind of real-time customer information that online retailers have always had.

Kevin Ashton, "That 'Internet of Things' Thing", RFID Journal, July 22, 2009 quotes, “Today computers and, therefore, the Internet are almost wholly dependent on human beings for information. Nearly all of the roughly 50 petabytes (a petabyte is 1,024 terabytes) of data available on the Internet were first captured and created by human beings by typing, pressing a record button, taking a digital picture, or scanning a bar code. Conventional diagrams of the Internet … leave out the most numerous and important routers of all - people. The problem is, people have limited time, attention and accuracy all of which means they are not very good at capturing data about things in the real world. And that's a big deal. We're physical, and so is our environment … You can't eat bits, burn them to stay warm or put them in your gas tank. Ideas and information are important, but things matter much more. Yet today's information technology is so dependent on data originated by people that our computers know more about ideas than things. If we had computers that knew everything there was to know about things using data they gathered without any help from us—we would be able to track and count everything, and greatly reduce waste, loss and cost. We would know when things needed replacing, repairing or recalling, and whether they were fresh or past their best. The Internet of Things has the potential to change the world, just as the Internet did.

The Internet of Things is not a futuristic, aspirational technology trend. It’s here today in the devices, sensors, cloud infrastructure, and data and business intelligence tools you are already using. Rather than thinking about the Internet of Things in terms of everything–such as billions of devices and sensors–focus on what matters most to you. Instead of thinking about the massive amount of data being produced, think about how one piece of data can provide value to your business.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_Things

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/internet-of-things.aspx

Premiere of LIF on Doordarshan

For those who missed 'Lessons in Forgetting'..
Here is a chance to watch it for the first time on television on Doordarshan National Network at 10 pm on 19th October, 2014 (Sunday ).

Be sure not to Miss it !!!

Follow us at:

https://www.facebook.com/Lessonsinforgettingthefilm?ref=hl

IT on Cloud

Information Technology can roughly be defined as, “The study or use of systems (especially computers and telecommunications for storing, retrieving and sending information. There are several industries which get classified under this synonymous umbrella including computer hardware, software, electronics, semiconductors, internet, telecom equipment, e-commerce and computer services.

Human have been storing information in various forms from the time of civilization, but as time has gone by there has been advances and changes in the systems of storing energy, innovation occur at a dynamic pace. As of 2007 almost 94% of the data stored worldwide was held digitally: 52% on hard disks, 28% on optical devices and 11% on digital magnetic tape. It has been estimated that the worldwide capacity to store information on electronic devices grew from less than 3 exabytes in 1986 to 295 exabytes in 2007, doubling roughly every 3 years.

Database management systems emerged in the 1960s to address the problem of storing and retrieving large amounts of data accurately and quickly. One of the earliest such systems was IBM's Information Management System (IMS), which is still widely deployed more than 40 years later.

There is a lot of data and information that is developed and maintained on a daily basis. We live in an age of electronic and digital world. Traditional business applications have always been very complicated and expensive. The amount and variety of hardware and software required to run them are daunting. You need a whole team of experts to install, configure, test, run, secure, and update them.

Business applications are moving to the cloud. It’s not just a fad—the shift from traditional software models to the Internet has steadily gained momentum over the last 10 years. In the next decade of cloud computing promises new ways to collaborate everywhere, through mobile devices.

Cloud computing is just a shift from traditional computing that gives businesses on-demand access to a variety of software and services while giving IT a shared pool of configurable computing resources at the platform, infrastructure and application layers. When done right, cloud computing helps businesses do more, faster by letting them tap into the power of massive datacenters and IT services without having to build, manage or maintain them.

Cloud computing lets IT offload complexity and burden, letting an organization focus on addressing the growing demand for new applications, new devices and new solutions for the resulting data explosion. In this fast-paced world of more devices, more apps and more data, IT is more challenging and exciting than ever. IT can answer this call for “more, faster” with cloud computing – so with cloud an organization can deliver new projects and products, manage more devices easily, crunch more data quickly, and spin up developments and test environments faster.

The latest innovations in cloud computing are making our business applications even more mobile and collaborative, similar to popular consumer apps like Facebook and Twitter. As consumers, we now expect that the information we care about will be pushed to us in real time, and business applications in the cloud are heading in that direction as well.

The cloud applications we're seeing at the moment really are the tip of the iceberg and, as the technology matures further, who knows how we may be using the cloud in even a year from now. Technologies and concepts such as the internet of things and smart cities are growing ever closer to becoming the norm as organizations begin to realize that the cloud can do so much more than simply speed up or reduce the cost of their IT - it can totally transform it.

References: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_technology

http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/server-cloud/solutions/cloud-computing.aspx#fbid%3DN_egY4rrbc5

http://www.salesforce.com/in/cloudcomputing/

http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2013/sep/24/cloud-computing-changing-world-healthcare

Oracle Practice

Today, enterprises operate in a dynamic business environment with an increasingly complex technology landscape. A comprehensive application suite that seamlessly integrates operations and provides value is required to address the challenges posed by disparate enterprise applications.

Businesses across industries are changing rapidly to address new challenges and capitalize on previously unseen business opportunities for business innovations and expansion. Emerging technology are reshaping business processes across industries profoundly. This demands that IT offers more flexible, agile and intelligent solutions to drive innovation and productivity of business processes.

Oracle Fusion Applications is the next generation application suite from Oracle, which is designed and developed on Oracle Middleware. It includes best of- breed functionality from existing oracle product lines.

Arowana has made significant investments in Oracle Fusion Applications to incorporate the best practices that oracle has shared with the company. Oracle Fusion Application Architecture enabled Companies to innovate, build on existing investments and seamlessly integrate with multi-platform systems to maximize their Returns on Investment (ROI) and also adopt easily to new disruptive and emerging technologies.

Arowana is a Gold partner of Oracle. Therefore uniquely positioned to enable Organizations to be early adapters and surmount the initial challenges and reap the benefits.

The company has experience in Oracle Fusion Middleware technologies can help Organizations in continuous development and support. With the engagement of other Organizations in Consultation and familiarization programs Arowana is enabled to leverage the Fusion applications with appropriate tools, accelerators, development methodologies and fusion framework.

From Fry to Fish- Growth of Arowana

Photo Credits: http://www.paintermagazine.co.uk/

There was once an Arowana swimming in the room of our Board of Directors. A sleek and slim fish which waded around in its tank as the men tried to find a suitable name for the company they were going to lay foundation to. That is when one person came up with the name “Arowana”. The fish is known to have several versatile characteristics one of them is adaptability.

Today, opportunities in the IT sector have linked with the advances in the sector. Bangalore being an IT hub has created a lot of opportunities for startup as well as well-established companies.  Amidst all these companies in Bangalore, Arowana Consulting Limited has set up its own establishment as a fast growing IT company.

As a partner proved to deliver solutions with quality, Arowana enables clients in Gulf Council Countries, USA and Africa to outperform competition and stay ahead with the curve of innovation and success. Enterprises who seek our help to transform and thrive, in a dynamic world through our Centers of Excellence, innovative products and co-creation of solutions.

In the year 1999, Managing Director Prince Thampi partnered with Macrosoft Systems in Muscat. The company provided implementation services for ERP applications and other IT services. They believed and worked on the principle of implementing innovative ideas that help us deliver quality products and solutions to our clients. 5 years later, in the year 2006 Arowana was established as an independent company, backed with experience and definite performance, making a leap into large ventures.

Over the past years Arowana has seen tremendous growth in the expansion of its empire. With 7 branches, 200 plus employees and 45 clients, Arowana has in fact grown from a small fry to a large fish.  An Arowana never stops evolving and finding its course through streams.

Arowana Consulting Limited has been appraised in; Customized Software Application Development Projects has been appraised at Capability Maturity Model Integration for Development or CMMI-DEV(r) - Maturity Level 3.

CMMI is a process improvement approach that provides organizations with the essential elements of effective processes that ultimately improve their performance.

An appraisal at maturity level 3 indicates that the organization is performing at a "defined" level. At this level, processes are well characterized and understood, and are described in standards, procedures, tools and methods. The organization's set of standard processes, which is the basis for maturity level 3, is established and improved over time.

Arowana’s Bangalore office concentrates on Application and development of products and solutions including Microsoft practice, Oracle Fusion Technologies, Mobile Application Development and Java Development Practice. The off shore is equipped to provide support to all products and solutions, implemented and developed by us. Added to these we also provide consultancy, solutions and services in emerging technologies such as Oracle-e-Biz suite, Big Data Analytics, Cloud Computing, Hyperion, Training services, testing services and SAS.

At Arowana we understand the importance of business relationships as well as employee engagement. We nurture a culture of unwavering ethics and mutual respect, our environment is lively to work in, this builds good productivity hence satisfying our clients.

The journey that an Arowana is generally alone, but we as Arowanites take is that of shoal work, the most important secret of building a skyscraper. Taking up challenges in various Industries and verticals and delivering with quality. 

Creating best solutions in an intelligent way

Today, many organizations are facing a crisis of data explosion. This information is so vast and dynamic that needs to be managed into defined, structured and useful information. Corporates use BI as a weapon to fight any fraud, abuse of material and to improve their business because it empowers decision makers at all levels of management.

Business Intelligence is also known as data warehousing as an organization’s information is consolidated to provide quick notifications of the organization’s business expectations, advanced reporting and analysis capabilities. This provides the ability to compare data in order to improve tactical and strategic management.

The process that enables Business Intelligence entails clear definition of business requirements, translated into technical terms by means of Extracting, Transforming, Loading / presenting data, often referred to as ETL or ETP.  Transformation of data into meaningful information requires the application of specific context, derived in a flexible manner. One of the biggest challenges in developing a data warehouse is determining the value of the data you keep. The successful data warehouse will be the result of a balancing act.

Good business Intelligence is the heart of every Organization and data is king, an enabling technology that provides the right context to the right person at the right time, which in turn gives an organization the insight they need to achieve real business agility.

Arowana’s Business Intelligence helps you to understand and embrace strategic planning for business growth, by identifying key trends and patterns in an organizations data. Arowana grants a 360 degree view of the business, enabling one to easily share data across business and give immediate access to vital customer and financial information. There are various tools which we use to integrate the information at fingertips for our customers.

While historically, business intelligence may have provided information at a management level only, extending the reach of business intelligence is becoming more important than ever. Simple, easy to use tools can be used by anyone across the business, helping you to share information across different departments and therefore save time on reporting and analytics.

The right approach to delivering information to the business is innovative thing and flexible designs. An organizations business may survive without applying BI, but must be tactfully enough to outsmart their competitors.

Shopaholic Women, the Ecommerce Fuel

                             

It is probably one of the oldest stereotypes that, women ‘Love to shop’. Well! Not all women do, but a majority does. Men on the other hand may not enjoy the activity as much as women do, there is a handful who love to scroll the net and scamper through a few racks. If not clothes and shoes they are gadget crazy shoppers. This is not just a mere stereotype, there are researches which back up these theories, using these theories Ecommerce markets grab the big piggy bank.

Women are indeed the Rocket fuel of Ecommerce. Forbes quoted an insightful study by Aileen Lee, Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield and buyers, which states why women dominate ecommerce. Women are majority users of social network around 55 % of social networkers are females. Her point is not just to be proud that women purchase more shoes or books or surf for more restaurants online than men, but rather to point to the business reality that women are the dominant purchasing population. Women are 70% of the customer base and they drive 74% of revenue.

Having said this Large Ecommerce companies in India such as Myntra, Flipkart, Amazon, Ebay are making use of this information in a very smart way. They know that woman are amplifiers and routers of the social web, placing women as their targets strategies are built  to sell and market branded goods.

Ecommerce uses big data analytics as their secret weapon to target their audience. Keeping in mind that there has been exponential growth in digitalization and prevalent social media experience, ecommerce uses big data tools to collect, manage, dispense and control structured and unstructured product information across B2B commerce channels. Accurate online content informs customers, builds trust, and helps to improve the opinion of the brands; this also gives their customers better shopping experiences.

There are a wide range of ecommerce softwares like shopify, 3Dcart, volusion, big commerce, pinnacle cart, Go daddy. These are fully integrated ecommerce software solution packages that gives the website owner control of all aspect of the website, not just a product catalogue. Imagine a website that would allow your customers to place an order for your goods and when they sent their order to you, your stock or inventory database will be updated immediately, outwards goods are notified and the customer is sent an advice from packing staff when the goods are shipped. With these smooth functioning reasons and plenty of crazy women shopaholics who get lured into the sirens of the sea of ecommerce, retailers have their money bags full.

What do shoppers look for?

Traditionally women take hours to shop; most of them love to look at ten options to buy one that suits them best. Several women window shop, for best buys wait for the End of season sale to buy the same at discounted prices. Ecommerce allows a shopper to spend hours surfing the net for hundreds of options, compare and buy and many other options. Ecommerce is basically a process of searching for and selecting products from online catalogues and then checking out with various payment options.

A shopper finds this delightful as sites offer attractive discounts, lower prices and varied options in comparison to mortar stores. The product gets delivered, with tracking details, pay on delivery option, neat packages and the last but the best option 30 day return policy. You don’t like it tell the retailer why and it is exchanged with money back offers as well. 

An ecommerce retailer benefits at the same time. As the analytics saves time by reducing paper work, errors in keying in data, shorter lead times for payment and return on investment in advertising, faster delivery of product. They also have the ability to handle complex situations, product ranges and customer profiles without the situation becoming unmanageable.

Conclusion

In e-commerce, female purchasing power is also pretty clear.  Sites like Zappos (>$1 billion in revenue last year), Groupon ($760m last year), Gilt Groupe ($500m projected revenue this year), Etsy (over $300m in GMV last year), and Diapers ($300m estimated revenue last year) are all driven by a majority of female customers.

Aileen Lee says, “Women in tech have been missing a key insight. If you figure out how to harness the power of female customers, you can rock the ecommerce world of business.”

Come to think of it none of us can put down those attractive extra 50 percent offs from Myntra or Flipkart, that too when they keep flashing up on your screen and you suddenly recall that it was your last glance on that particular ecommerce site, and we do end up shopping.

References: 

http://www.unilogcorp.com/pdf/Big-Data-Analytics-in-B2B-ecommerce-v2.pdf

http://www.bustle.com/articles/19853-why-do-women-like-to-shop-more-than-men-stereotype-or-not-researchers-have-their-theories

http://www.dynamicwebs.com.au/tutorials/e-commerce.htm

http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/20/why-women-rule-the-internet/


Find out more about Arowana: www.arowanaconsulting.com

Corporate Treasurer's Role

A treasurer in any department play’s a key role. Any institute, industry or a large organization will have a treasury section which requires knowledgeable people to handle it. Treasury is a sector which involves several key risks related to interest rates, credit, currency, commodity and operations. Large organizations face some or all of these risks to varying degrees. Corporate treasurers generally manage corporate finances and ensure a judicious use of surpluses in Investments and money

markets.Treasurers serve as financial risk managers that seek to protect a company’s value from

the financial risks it faces from its business activities. When a risk arises, it can arise from any and many sources, the role requires an understanding of many businesses and the ability to relate and communicate with various financial professionals.

Much before the 20^th century, many companies were small, family owned and family run, but toady with the evolution of public ownership many large international conglomerates have boomed that trade publicly on one or many global exchanges. The CFO (Chief Financial Officer) is responsible for analyzing and reviewing financial data, reporting financial performances, preparing budgets and managing financial expenditure and costs. Along with checking the corporation’s financial health, integrity and security, he is also responsible for carrying out the Board’s directive in organizational policies associated with the financial exposure of an organization, while transacting any third party

financial arrangement. Adherence to policies will be monitored to avoid preventable financial exposure. In many Banks and corporate organizations, lack of proper risk management leads to

several external influences. There are many corporate solutions in the Market to handle these risks. Majority of these risk management tools comes with a large numbers of bells and whistles, making the product expensive or difficult to use and manage.

What an organization requires is, fully integrated solution covering cash, debt and investments, financial risks treasury accounting, basically a straight forward Treasury and Risk management solution. Companies need to ensure that their corporate financial strategies are appropriately aligned, then ensure the returns are adequate and that appropriate risk management techniques are
deployed.  It is clear that executive management and corporate treasury departments have and will need to respond to this new environment. Secure banking relationships and sources of financing

have become more precarious.

Executive management now requires more information and reassurance. Assumptions about risks and hedging strategies will routinely be more robustly challenged and tested. Corporate treasurers will need greater knowledge of the financial markets together with the ability to make strategic assessments and communicate them effectively to executive management. It is likely to be an exciting and challenging time to be in treasury management. Arowana Consulting Limited, joined hands with certain leading Corporate Organizations and Treasury Domain experts to develop a simple product called Arowana Risk and Treasury Solution (ART) which is suitable for any Corporate Organization, involved with day to day Market operations in the Money Markets and Currency

Markets.Treasurers are increasingly assuming more strategic roles in companies. They have moved

beyond managing working capital to becoming increasingly involved with working with a company's senior management to manage risk and boost the bottom line. 

Arowana’s Solutions

At Arowana we understand that ‘off-the-shelf’ products and solutions cannot fully meet any Organization’s automation requirements. Tailor made solutions will then have to be built to work in conjunction with the software to bridge the gap.

‘Off the shelf’ products come with many unwanted bells and whistles. All these come at an additional cost. Besides they need additional investments in both Hardware, in licences and they consume valuable resources which in turn creates a pressure on Infrastructure.

As a CMMI Level 3 Compliant Organization, we have systems and processes in place. We are passionately devoted to agreed timelines and Quality. Our well-equipped Development centres are staffed with competent delivery teams that can handle projects in emerging technologies. Our Development teams are trained routinely on all technologies. We have an In-house Quality Testing Centre of Excellence with skilled resources and latest tools which, certifies all releases after comprehensive testing.

Arowana understands the challenges in Managing and implementing projects. We have competent in house functional consultants, Solution Architects, technologists and Business Analysts that can understand your Business, accurately scope the tasks to deliver the products and solutions needed. One of the biggest concerns is often the interfacing capabilities of the solutions. This is where Arowana’s vast experience is Product and solution engineering comes in. We can provide solutions that can be optimized to suit your requirements and work seamlessly with your existing investments, to enable you to get a good user experience. 

Our Consultants and Analysts will study your existing investments, understand your pain areas and work with you in building solutions that will enable you to increase efficiencies.  Arowana will be a reliable and credible partner in your endeavours to achieve better utilization. We can help you upgrade and use emerging technologies to leverage optimum results in your pursuit for growth.