When working with clients or prospects, I always relished and appreciated an “Opportunity for Excellence“. What does that mean? It means that when a client or prospect calls with a specific problem that is time sensitive and we, as an organization and team, jump on the problem and work to solve it.

We have had several “Opportunities for Excellence” in the past few months’ with our clientele. On two of them we worked through the Christmas holidays. We have had numerous times where we had several of our colleagues pull “all-nighters” just to respond to a client’s needs. We have met deadlines, pushed ourselves, strived to turn out the best work we could do.

This excellence at my organization can only be exhibited by the members i.e. our employees. When will you have an “opportunity for excellence”? When will you be called upon to deliver success in impossible timeframes and conditions?

Let me end by telling you this. When you go the extra mile for your customer and succeed, you go from being a vendor to being a strategic partner.

Phil Hodsdon, SVP, Sales & Solutions at Bodhtree.

Bodhtree has been adjudged as a winner of the ChannelWorld Premier 100 Awards, 2013, for the third time in a row. Once again, we emerged as a winner among hundreds of worthy nominations that the jury had received from across India. This recognition is for displaying exemplary business practices in a challenging and competitive business environment.

After a stringent evaluation process, a jury comprising of senior and experienced IDG staff screened all entries and announced the winners last week. IDG has invited us to join the exclusive group of winners for a grand celebration and awards ceremony on May 3^rd 2013 at Hyatt Regency, Mumbai.

This award is an important milestone for us and reaffirms our commitment towards our partnerships and constant innovation in the IT channel space.

Using spreadsheets to track Opportunities is a cumbersome and time consuming task. Most established and growing organizations today are moving away from traditional approaches of opportunity management and are adopting technology to streamline this process.

One of our esteemed customers also had a similar requirement – they wanted to deploy a web-based, interactive and robust platform to manage their booked and to-be booked opportunities across their process groups spread across multiple locations.

Consolidating those details on a day-to-day basis and generating reports in a presentable format was a huge challenge for the Operations and the Finance team.

As part of the Operations team, we were given a chance to provide a proof of concept to replace the manual process with an automated tool. We had limited time and resources to demonstrate a live working model within 2 weeks.

I had to single-handedly coordinate with team leads across business units to gather the business requirements and work with our team to develop a web based solution on Linux platform in less than 2 weeks.

It gives me immense satisfaction to state that I was able to successfully deploy the tool within the expected timeframe.

Sunil Vytle is an IT Developer, BSI team

My blog is centered on the theme of making a conscious decision to begin to view data as if it was “alive” with all the complexities and mysteries of a human being. By taking this approach I hope to provide a journey and a platform to spark a conversation on how this perspective can then begin to change on how we act towards data and how our decisions around data might then change. Yet, if I do take this premise then it is in my personal opinion that at the end of the day that my data or data that I personally interact with it or have responsibility of will be “Happy Data”.

When I studied biopsychology (combo of psychology + neuroscience) at UCSD we would often look at how biological processes interact with emotions and cognition. As I was earning my degree too often the common debate of nature vs. nurture would be highlighted in this branch of psychology. Over the years, I truly believe that the difference of nature vs. nurture is very important but there is strong importance the relationship between both of them. By nature you carry the traits that might define you but you are nurtured to become the human being that you become as an adult by your interactions. Those interaction can start with your family environment (data in your organization), your extended family (data loosely related) , peer experience (how data interacts with other data), and extending to influences in socio-economic status(will you make different decision around your data in you are economical sound). So if my goal is to make sure that at the end of the day my data is happy what can I do to make sure this happens? What should I consider in the DNA of my data? What things should I consider to provide a positive environment as my data is maturing in my ecosystem?

Nurture: In the beginning there was “Little Data”

I have a strong passion for Analytics so a lot my examples going forward would probably gravitate towards that subject. (Yet, I will try to change around in future postings)Lets then look at my first example on when an organization has decided to launch existing product line in a different channel. Let’s say that this organization has traditionally provided this product only via direct to consumer over the web and print channel (catalog). Now they want to have physical presence were can have a more intimate relationship with the customer and have begun to roll their products via kiosk in a mall. It is anticipated that mix % of these new distribution channel might increase to 15% in 12 month period so they are being cautious not to tarnish the brand but also cognizant that there is certain opportunity cost if they do not move fast enough. Both the folks in marketing and product development might have decided that it was more important to the launch the product quickly then to see if the proper process of capturing the entire 360 degree touch points of the customer. In this example, the organization rolled out the product and did not think about the various components that the transactions with the customer might be different that on the web. Thus, it is treating the data with a limited view. So the data is small and young at the beginning of this process. If the data was alive like a human being would you wait until the data grows or would you try to deal data at a different cycle of the process? It is best to think about it, listen to it, analyze it, interpret it, treat it, nurture it, and protect it (we will talk about security in detail in later blogs) at a stage that it is not as complex and the size is manageable. You also have a stronger chance to nurture it along the process and can influence the outcome of this data by beginning a relationship with it earlier on. You are able to change some the environment and process when you begin to understand the importance of this data in the future.

I will try to get into more details on different examples on different stages in maturity and complexities of data going forward on other postings. I did not get into too much detail given that I wanted to introduce this subject first. I am excited to see in other discussion what we should consider in your organization if the data might be unstructured and rebellious, how then you would then need to act around it. Also, if you have old enterprise data that has been there a long time what are different ways to deal with historical and older data. Regardless, your data should be happy and you should consider how to get there. Can you provide an example in your organization that if you had taken this approach the outcome would be different? Did I miss something or angle that I should have considered? Thank you and please share your comments.

Kain A Sosa VP, Analytics at Bodhtree with expertise on various big data technologies, like Hadoop, Big query, Passionate leader in Data Analytics, Business Intelligence, and Big Data services.

– A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu
Chinese philosopher (604 BC – 531BC)

In the technology business quality is paramount in everything you do; it is a primitive component for making customers happy and at the same time building competitive advantage. As I recall my involvement in Bodhtree’s recent CMMi Maturity Level 3 assessment, I would like to share my experiences from the entire journey.

Bodhtree was founded in 1999, with an objective of offering software services and technology solutions to meet complex business challenges of their clients. With this as a mission, it is implicit to win the confidence of our clients by providing them with quality solutions that are best suited for their business needs.

To achieve this goal it is imperative for Bodhtree to improve their QMS (Quality Management Systems), through achieving proven Quality Standards, and the first step in this process is the ISO 9001 accreditation.

As a sequel, Bodhtree got certification of compliance with ISO 9001:2000 in the year 2004 and ISO 9001:2008 in the year 2009. On the ISO certification front, we plan to go for the coveted ISO 27000 SSAE Type – 2 certification in the coming days. Nevertheless one swallow does not make a summer and these baby steps became a harbinger of better days to come for Bodhtree. In this context a requirement for a better Quality Processes & Procedures suggested by another straw in the wind i.e. the rapid growth of the organization, in terms of employee strength, more number of clients, higher turnover, improved work environment, and advanced state–of-the-art technologies. At this point of time (i.e. July 2012) the management took a tenacious & prudent decision to go for CMMi Dev. V 1.3 ML 3 appraisal.

CMMi Dev. V1.3.Ml 3 Appraisal

A purchase order was placed on M/S Prominds in Jan 2012 by our organisation, for Service of Professional Advisory Support of CMMI Dev. V 1.3 ML3. Since then we have crossed several milestones in the journey of getting CMMi Appraisal – like Release of QMS Definition, SQA Reviews, QMS Awareness Trainings, Internal Auditors Training, Appraisal Team Members Trainings, Quiz competitions, Check Point Reviews, Internal Audits, Readiness Reviews and SCAMPI Class A Appraisal Team Training by Mr P.M.Shareef (Lead Appraiser), and finally reached the stage where it was ready for the SCAMPISM Class A Appraisal starting from 28-Jan-2013 to 2-Feb -2013.

During this long journey Bodhtree encountered several challenges in institutionalizing the BCL-QMS (procedures and templates etc…), missed the completion of a few targeted milestones, could not close the audit queries as scheduled, etc. However, during this challenging journey, one optimistic and inspiring trait that we all demonstrated was team work complemented by continued support from top management. Without these encouraging factors, achieving CMMi Level 3 maturity was almost impossible.

On 2-Feb -2013 in the closing meeting, the Lead Appraiser announced “I am pleased to inform you that Bodhtree has been successfully appraised at “CMMI Dev. V1.3 Maturity Level 3”.

On 21-Feb- the CMMi institute approved our appraisal and shared the note given below with our sponsor and Managing Director, Mr. Pal Natarajan:

“The CMMI Institute has accepted SCAMPI appraisal # 19856 for Product Engineering, Analytics & Enterprise Services (PACE) submitted on 02/18/2013. The appraisal is now APPROVED for public use”.

Thanks to all contributors and our relentless effort, today Bodhtree is a CMMi ML 3 company.

Conclusion
Often, survival itself is an achievement. We should not only sustain the Maturity Level 3 rating but also accomplish higher levels of maturity in future.

In this context we should remember the quote from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel: “it will be folly to ignore realities; facts take their revenge if they are not faced squarely and well. “

Sreedhar Karnam SEPG Head and account manager for multiple accounts at Bodhtree.

Bodhtree Consulting Limited announced today that their Product Engineering, Analytics, Cloud and Enterprise Services Practices (PACE) portfolio is expanding worldwide in the areas of Big Data, Oracle Fusion Applications and SaaS services. Their PACE services portfolio has been appraised for CMMi Maturity Level 3.

Hyderabad – March 21, 2013 – Bodhtree Consulting Limited (www.Bodhtree.com), a global product engineering and technology solutions integrator with facilities in India and North America today announced its plans to intensify its global system integration market operations with new aggression and ramp up its operations as it widens its global customer portfolio.

According to leading Industry analysts, Actionable Analytics, Big Data and Cloud Computing are among the top technology focus areas that are strategic to most organizations in 2013, and Bodhtree with their services portfolio is well positioned to address requirements that will be driven by these technology trends.

Commenting on the CMMi Maturity Level 3 appraisal, Pal Natarajan, Managing Director of Bodhtree said “There is a huge opportunity out there in the global market for us in the system integration and product innovation space. CMMi Level 3 puts us in a select league of global technology services firms. This level 3 rating will help us further expand our customer portfolio and drive customer satisfaction through service excellence, robust standards and mature processes.”

A total of 17 critical engineering and organizational level processes were assessed in Bodhtree on various parameters like on-time delivery, project documentation, customer satisfaction, performance measurement and other stringent parameters. The appraisal team was led by SEI Certified SCAMPI high maturity lead.

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. Bodhtree has worked with many Fortune 500 companies and SMBs to help manage and optimize business. Bodhtree expects the level 3 rating to help further their growth in system integration business worldwide as customers seek to work with companies that follow rigorous technology practices.

Aditya Rao, Director, New Projects at Pennar Industries Ltd said “I have been working with Bodhtree for the past three years and they have always provided high quality services.”

Achieving CMMI Level 3 rating is reflective of Bodhtree’s process discipline and dedication to quality in the management and development of software solutions. Bodhtree will continue to invest in process improvement for highest customer satisfaction.

Since its inception in 1999, Bodhtree has grown as a global provider of Innovative IT consulting and technology services with sales offices and software development centers across India, USA, Middle East and APAC regions.

Bodhtree Consulting Limited is listed in Madras Stock Exchange and has been witnessing steady growth YoY.

About Bodhtree

Bodhtree is a global technology solutions integrator, delivering innovative product engineering, analytics, cloud and enterprise services for SMBs and large-scale enterprises. With extensive domain and IT experience, Bodhtree understands complex business challenges, and delivers solutions that drive transformational growth. As a select partner of leading Fortune 500 technology providers such as Oracle Corporation (ORCL), Salesforce.com (CRM), etc., we provide services tailored to meet specific client needs. With in-depth product knowledge and extensive infrastructure expertise, our solutions are designed for optimum integration within existing IT environments to consistently maximize business performance.

About CMMI Institute

CMMI is the result of more than 20 years of ongoing work at Carnegie Mellon University by members of industry, government, and the Software Engineering Institute. Powered by Carnegie Mellon, the CMMI Institute is working to build upon CMMI’s success, advance the state of the practice, accelerate the development and adoption of best practices, and provide solutions to the emerging needs of businesses around the world.

Media Contact for Bodhtree
Muralidharan
EnRight PR
Cell phone: +91 9885109594
E-mail:enright@enrightpr.com

I strongly believe that companies with a successful Big Data strategy have an information-centric culture where all employees are fully aware of the possibilities of well-analyzed and visualized information. Better data visualization can help you make better decisions

As a matter of fact, Gartner’s top predictions for 2012 and beyond included this prediction about Big Data: “Through 2015, more than 85 percent of Fortune 500 organizations will fail to effectively exploit Big Data for competitive advantage.” This leads to the question “Why are so many customers failing in their Big Data initiatives?”

The success of a Big Data implementation is directly proportional to the maturity model of the organization.

Remembering the Big Data project implementation experience I would like to share the approach that includes three assessment steps as mentioned below. I thought it would be insightful if I also mention here the recommendations which lead to a successful Big Data implementation.

I. APPROACH

II. RECOMMENDATION

Recommend a model, which will demonstrate the real value of Big Data as it is applicable to an organization. The final recommendations and roadmap, based on our learning’s yield one of two possible outcomes:

• If an organization already has all the necessary tools, processes, systems, and solution to solve the existing problems, then we will recommend through a business case that they are not a good contender to adopt Big Data technologies but can resolve their problems with existing ecosystem

• If an organization demonstrates the potential value of a Big Data investment, then we would recommend moving forward with next steps: take the executable roadmap and blueprint to engage in a Big Data proof of concept (POC)

III. METHODOLOGY

Organizations that approach big data from a value perspective with partnership between the business and IT are much more likely to be successful than those which adopt a pure technology approach. For this reason, making appropriate investments in both technology and organizational skill sets to ensure enterprise capability in extracting value from big data is essential.

Don’t wait, start now

Start collecting massive amounts of data and store it centralized with Hadoop, hire or train your data scientists and change your culture to an information-centric organization. This will help to drive innovation and stay ahead. Don’t wait, as Big Data is the only way forward.

Phani Kumar Reddy is a Manager Analytics at Bodhtree, Managing presales of BI with expertise on various big data technologies, like Hadoop, Big query , Passionate leader in Data Analytics, Business Intelligence, and Big Data services

Do you know there exists a Facebook for sports?

While developing inRecruit for Sports/Scouting and recruiting industry I realized that technology is widely adopted in the sports industry too, among several other industries. inRecruit is a social platform that allows coaches, scouts, athletes, parents (and even fans) to share, find, view and distribute data and communicate directly with each other in real time.

Coaches are often under tremendous pressure to recruit the best athletes to form winning teams and increase chances of getting college sports scholarships. They need a fast, user-friendly, efficient and affordable tool that allows them to recruit a player who isn’t “in their backyard” while also allowing them to share their recruiting data with each other in real time.

At the same time parents of top athletes lack a central repository to explore all available options for their children and to communicate directly with “other” coaches outside of the ones who are specially selected for them.

inRecruit developed on PHP platform using Agile Methodology, fulfills the organizational recruiting needs of college coaches, high school athletes and their parents for the changing social media world.

Across the sporting arena inRecruit is a great platform for Coaches, Athletes and their fans to explore, discover and connect in social-media style. It is easy to create and enhance player profiles with inRecruit just by adding photos and videos, to network with college coaches. Their customizable newsfeeds provide up-to-date information on athletics, other players, teams and coaches reducing the need for coaches to manually access this information from various sources.

Coaches can stay organized with the calendar and reminder features, as well as help promoting their teams and players via social media sharing, inviting email or adding Facebook contacts to join the InRecruit.com platform to bolster support network.

inRecruit also provides the most interactive and engaging experience for fans of college and high school sports. Uploading, viewing and sharing videos and photos can help promote favorite teams or players to other fans and college coaches. It’s now easy for fans to customize their newsfeed for the latest updates from the world of sports recruiting. Options to invite email contacts or connect with Facebook friends on inRecruit can help build fan profile and increase level of interaction. This unique blend of athlete and fan interaction will revolutionize not only the way fans associate with their idols but also how athletes control, communicate and develop their ‘brand’.

Some interesting features of inRecruit.

inRecruit for Coaches

• Cloud-based management system
• Customized news feeds
• Calendaring with player’s schedules; Location-based tracking

inRecruit for Athletes

• Communication w/ verified coaches
• Video sharing
• Who’s viewed
• Build fan base

inRecruit for Parents

• Profile news feed
• Video and picture upload
• Share with family & friends
• Virtual scrapbook

inRecruit for Fans

• Video sharing with athletes
• Fan ratings
• News feeds / RSS
• Fantasy games

As sports’ recruiting evolves more efficiently, inRecruit empowers coaches and athletes to realize their dreams of competing for and receiving sports scholarships.

Prashanth Kumar Abbagani is a Group Manager heading Product Engineering team at Bodhtree. He has substantial knowledge on various enterprise features of Java EE standards and Middleware(Application/Web server) software including Monitoring, Load Balancing, High Availability, Clustering, Provisioning etc.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is often associated with XML and Web Services. But in my opinion it is a business driven approach that can greatly help in promoting agility between Business and IT. I started thinking about this more seriously as I saw iPads from China being directly shipped to customers in the US.

My recent experience in managing a SOA implementation using Oracle Fusion Middleware has transformed this opinion into a belief.

One of our customers – the no.1 brand in the air coolers industry worldwide had an immediate business need – to work with their B2B partners to drop ship orders directly to their end customers. In more technical terms, they wanted to be able to process customer orders through Oracle ERP and send Warehouse Shipment Orders via EDI to the 3PL provider.

Thanks to the functionality offered by SOA Suite 11g and B2B adapter, we were able to successfully automate this process. Our solution enables them to process complex multi-record structured, position based files and seamlessly integrate them with Oracle E-Business Suite.

Our solution not only compliments their new business model, but also empowers their team to generate business performance reports from real time transactional data using Oracle Business Activity Monitoring (BAM).

At the end of this pilot our customer was delighted to see his new business model coming live and has now decided to work with us to institutionalize this further in their organization.

Khaleel Shaik is a Technical Architect and heads SOA and Java Practice at Bodhtree. He specializes in JAVA/J2EE Technologies, Applications Integration using the SOA technologies with more focus on Oracle Fusion Middleware (BPEL/ OSB/ BAM/ B2B/ Oracle Application Adapter/ etc.).

Bodhtree Announced Today That it has Been Selected to Help Co-develop Core Areas Within Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management Applications

Bodhtree, a leading product engineering and solutions integration company, announced today it has been selected as a co-developer to help build Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management (SCM) applications. Bodhtree’s strong product engineering background and deep expertise in the Oracle product portfolio positioned the company as a good choice to further advance the quality and innovation of these products.

The co-development summary states, “Bodhtree will provide engineering and required functional and technical assistance to Oracle as a co-development partner. Oracle will leverage Bodhtree’s Product development DNA to co-develop Fusion specifically in the area of supply chain management related applications.”

Krishna Guda (GK), CEO of Bodhtree, commented on the announcement, “We are extremely happy for this recognition and excited to contribute to Oracle’s exceptional product suite. Bodhtree was selected as a partner based on our extensive knowledge of the Oracle eco-system and business domain knowledge. We look forward to expanding our collaborative relationship with Oracle through the success of these initiatives.”

“We appreciate Bodhtree’s leadership team and their commitment to the success of Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management applications. This collaboration will further strengthen our focus areas and enable us to help meet our customer needs,” saidJon Chorley, chief sustainability officer and vice president, supply chain management product strategy, Oracle.

Oracle will leverage Bodhtree’s product development expertise towards value-driven goals within the product portfolio, addressing specific customer needs in various markets. Bodhtree has already made substantial investments in building an Oracle practice. This co-development work will offer extensive benefit to Oracle and Bodhtree customers, both in expanding the product suite and preparing Bodhtree with the depth of knowledge to deploy these products to the most advanced enterprises.

Bodhtree is a Gold level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN).

About Bodhtree:

Bodhtree is a global technology solutions integrator, delivering innovative product engineering, analytics, cloud and enterprise services for SMBs and large-scale enterprises. With extensive domain and IT experience, Bodhtree understands complex business challenges, and delivers solutions that drive transformational growth. As a select partner of leading Fortune 500 technology providers, we provide services tailored to meet specific client needs. With in-depth product knowledge and extensive infrastructure expertise, our solutions are designed for optimum integration within existing IT environments to consistently maximize business performance.

About Oracle PartnerNetwork:

Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized is the latest version of Oracle’s partner program that provides partners with tools to better develop, sell and implement Oracle solutions. OPN Specialized offers resources to train and support specialized knowledge of Oracle products and solutions and has evolved to recognize Oracle’s growing product portfolio, partner base and business opportunity. Key to the latest enhancements to OPN is the ability for partners to differentiate through Specializations. Specializations are achieved through competency development, business results, expertise and proven success.

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