The 10 Best Professional Services Automation Solution providers 2018

November
1
Best
Professional
Solution Providers 2018
Tech Trend
People Analytics: A Magical
Crystal Ball for HR Fraternity
Future-Bots
Catching-up with the
Robotics for Better Future
Mounir Hilal
Chief Customer Officer
& Senior Vice President
PSA Innovation with the Tenrox platform

PSA: Fortifying
Industries through
Integrated Software
Solution
s businesses continue to evolve, they look for an integrated solution or tool which can streamline
Atheir number of operations, optimize efficiency, and attain higher productivity and profitability.
Professional Services Automation, frequently abbreviated to PSA, has made this possible. PSA is
unified software designed to assist professionals with project management and resource management. The
solution embraces time tracking, invoicing, resource planning, business intelligence, and collaboration
tools used by many project teams. Besides, it aids professional service providers to manage their client
engagements throughout the project cycle.
PSA software solution delivers a consistent method for overall management process from planning,
managing to measuring the performance of each project throughout its execution process. Ultimately, it
allows its users to integrate industry metrics in order to get better understanding of operations.
PSA software was originally developed for the professional service sectors which includes major industrial
traits. The tool also helps organizations to gain control over their project, financial, timeline, and resource
data. Organizations often choose to update their PSA tools to increase its productivity and to meet client
needs.
In order to shed light over organizations which are driving business processes with an improved set of
functionalities, Insights Success has nominated, “The 10 Best Professional Services Automation
Solution Providers 2018”, which are aggressively establishing industrial aspects with their proficient
service automation solutions all over the world.
On the cover, we have encompassed Upland Software, a leading cloud-based enterprise work
management software provider that enables its users with its family of applications to manage their

projects, professional workforce, IT investments, automate document-intensive business processes
and effectively engage with their customers, prospects, and community via web and mobile
technologies.
Further, this magazine also features SimplyBook.me, one of the most successful online appointments
scheduling software provider in the market, which helps service based companies to work effectively
with a solution that makes them stand out as professionals. ClientFlow an integrated platform that
brings Shared Inbox Management and Project Management together which helps management to
have an overview on their team activities and give essential information on one platform. Haulio a
fast-growing startup in the Container Haulage industry backed by the world’s leading Ports and
Terminals Group, PSA, solving a global Container Haulage infrastructural problem through new
thinking and new technology. Kimble Applications, a cloud-based software-as-a-service company
providing professional service automation (PSA) solution known as Kimble PSA for Force.com, a
cloud computing platform from Salesforce.com. Cloud Coach, the leading company with unified
automation solutions which enhance organizations overall process with specialized enterprise-class
project management and productivity software. AbacusNext, one of the best in class Professional
Services Automation solution provider that helps firms with stringent security and compliance needs
to grow by providing Compliance-Ready technology solutions and CrossConcept, a leading
company with unified PSA solution that contains set of feature focusing on best practice functionality
that service organizations actually use.
Apart from this, our in-house editors have also written masterly-crafted articles named “Cloud
Computing – Revamping the Technology for the Next Generation” and “Key Trends that are
Driving Transformation in SaaS”.
So, let’s start flipping the pages of the magazine to acknowledge the firms that are simplifying the
processes.
Happy reading!
Bhushan Kadam

Upland Software:
PSA Innovation with the
Tenrox platform
Cover Story
08
CXO
30 36 44
Leadership Viewpoint
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Opportunity for Better,
Safer, Smarter Cities
Virtuoso’s Vision
The Shift that Broke
the Pendulum
Maestros Insights
AI: From Articial
to Authentic

CONTENTS
Articles
22 38
Future-Bots
Catching-up with the
Robotics for Better Future
Tech Trend
People Analytics: A Magical
Crystal Ball for HR Fraternity
18
ClientFlow
A Comprehensive Project
Management Solutions Provider
20
Cloud Coach
Next Generation
Project Automation
18
20
26
28
34
42
46
CrossConcept
Simplicity is the Future
Haulio
Delivering Exemplary
Haulage Solutions
Kimble Applications
Revolutionizing PSA
Solutions in the Cloud
SimplyBook.me
The Pioneers of Appointment
Scheduling Services
TOP Step Consulting
Striding towards Professional
Services Automation Excellence
26
34
46
28
42

Editor-in-Chief Pooja M. Bansal
Managing Editor Anish Miller
Executive Editor Bhushan Kadam
Assistant Editors Jenny Fernandes
Kedar Kulkarni
Contributing Editors Ishan Mittal
Hitesh Dhamani
Visualiser David King
Art & Design Director Amol Kamble
Associate Designer Kushagra Gupta
Co-designer Asha Bange
Art & Picture Editors Paul Belin
Jayant Khanna
Senior Sales Manager Passi D.
Business Development Manager Peter Collins
Marketing Manager John Matthew
Business Development Executives
Steve, Joe, Alan, Jagdish
Sales Executives
David, Kevin, Mark, Pranay
Technical Head Jacob Smile
Technical Specialists Amar, Pratiksha
Digital Marketing Manager Marry D’Souza
Online Marketing Strategists
Alina Sege, Shubham
SME-SMO Executives
Prashant Chevale, Uma Dhenge
Research Analyst Patrick James
Circulation Managers Robert, Tanaji
Database Management Stella Andrew
Technology Consultant David Stokes
Insights Success Media Tech LLC
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Dublin, OH 43017, United States
Phone - (614)-602-1754
Email: info@insightssuccess.com
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sales@insightssuccess.com
November, 2018
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Reprint rights remain solely with Insights Success.

Cover Story
Mounir Hilal
Chief Customer Officer
& Senior Vice President

1
Best
Professional
Solution providers 2018
Upland Software:
PSA Innovation with the
Tenrox platform

n recent years, businesses have evolved to operate
Ifaster, in a more dynamic and complex landscape. New
approaches are being introduced that combine the best
of project and financial management, social collaboration,
automation, real-time business intelligence, and much
more. When combined, these systems help knowledge
workers to become more efficient and adept, transforming
how organizations operate to become more nimble, and
with greater ability to stand out against their competition.
Upland Software is a leading provider of cloud-based
enterprise work management software. Its family of
applications enables users to manage their projects,
professional workforce, and IT investments; automate
document-intensive business processes; and effectively
engage with their customers, prospects, and community via
the web and mobile technologies. With more than 4,000
customers and over 450,000 users around the world, Upland
Software solutions help customers run their operations
smoothly, adapt to change quickly, and achieve better
results every day.
Upland understands that to compete in today’s business
environment, people need to access, analyze, and act on
information in real-time and collaborate with team
members around the globe. Its products provide enterprise
work management solutions that are purpose-built for the
challenge at hand, not bloated suites or costly on-premise
software. And because its products are cloud-based and
architected for performance, scalability, and security,
Upland keeps its people connected anytime, anywhere, and
from any device.
Professional Services Innovation
Tenrox is Upland’s powerful yet intuitive Professional
Services Automation (PSA) platform that helps
organizations to better plan and manage projects and
optimize the utilization of their team. It helps improve
billable utilization, provides insights into resource capacity
aimed at reducing bench time, keeps costs in check, ensures
“Delivering powerful results
through enterprise work
management solutions.”
on-time and accurate invoicing and accelerate revenue
recognition.
Tenrox is equally recognized as one of the most complete
enterprise timesheet solutions on the market, giving its
customers the utmost flexibility to implement complex
timesheet compliance policies, configure timesheet routing
workflows specific to their unique business needs and
customize timesheet templates according to the different
employee types and requirements.
Tenrox delivers excellence to its customers and is trusted by
international Services Organizations such as AKA
Enterprises, Autodesk, FICO, and JDA Software.
But, Tenrox is more than just PSA software. It is a platform
that provides end-to-end functionality for Professional
Services Organizations, that includes sales enablement,
customer reference management, and knowledge
management. In addition, it provides built-in analytics and
integration capabilities.
Imparting Leadership
Mounir Hilal is the Chief Customer Officer and Senior
Vice President at Upland Software. With over 20 years of
experience in the Professional Services (PS) space, Mr.
Hilal has worked closely with Upland enterprise clients to
drive maturity around their practice and define their longterm
strategy. As a PS practitioner himself, Mr. Hilal leads
Upland’s global Professional Services group, delivering
outstanding financial performance with great customer
outcomes.
Mr. Hilal is an active participant with industry analysts and
leading organizations that define the PSA market, including
PS Village, PMI, and TSIA. He is an active speaker, and has
presented at PMI events, as well as internationally. At the
recent event in London, UK “Innovation through
Integration,” Mr. Hilal shared his vision on Digital
Transformation. He is also a major contributor to the books
“The Rise of the Project Workforce: Managing People and
Projects in a Flat World” and “Professional Services
Automation: Optimizing Project & Service Oriented
Organizations” Both of which were at the forefront of
establishing the PSA market, sharing a strategy and vision
for professional services automation.
Anticipating Trends in the Professional Services
Industry
With an increase in fixed bid projects, companies need to be
attentive to how they run their projects, and maintain
profitability:

implementation and continued return on investment.
Upland meets this need through strong relationships within
the Professional Services industry. Regular interactions
with analysts and industry professionals features
predominantly in their practice, and this is evidenced in
their approach towards implementation, and support. Not
only do they provide configuration and how-to training,
they also share best practices and guidance throughout the
engagement.
At Upland, they foster a partnership model with their
customers, offering numerous opportunities for customers
to provide product feedback and contribute to the roadmap.
Customers are provided regular updates on the roadmap,
resulting in a positive customer experience.
Tenrox - Innovation Through Integration
As more companies move to implementing fixed bid
projects, they face increasing pressure on margins. For them
to remain competitive, they must look for creative ways to
deliver results more effectively. That’s where Knowledge
Management comes into play. In March 2018, Upland
announced the integration of its KCS v6 verified knowledge
solution into Tenrox, giving organizations the ability to
embed their own services playbooks, project know-how and
corporate compliance policies within their PSA
environment. Team members can search, find and create
“best practices” and “lessons learned” content, to ensure
greater collaboration, elevate project quality, improve profit
margins, and be compliant with corporate policies.
Recognized by KM World Magazine as a Trend-Setting
Product of 2018, Tenrox is the only PSA with embedded
knowledge.
Desire for better business intelligence
Upland recognizes that business intelligence is a key
function for companies today, and created a strategic
offering called Upland Analytics for all of its products.
Built right into each of the products, Upland Analytics
allows customers to visualize their data and make insightful
decisions about their business. For Tenrox, Upland
Analytics comes with pre-built reports and dashboards so
customers can monitor trends and identify gaps, in
real-time, about their resources, projects and financial
performance, without having to rely on BI specialists or
third-party reporting tools.
The shift from vendor to trusted advisor
In today’s business landscape, customers are looking for
more than just vendors. They are looking for solution
providers who can provide subject matter expertise and
industry best practices to ensure a successful
The ongoing proliferation of SaaS-based solutions, means
that PSA vendors need to provide more than just core
functionality to stay relevant. Upland is uniquely positioned
to lead this challenge because of its vast portfolio of cloudbased
solutions. Upland actively seeks synergies between
its products, to identify innovative opportunities that will
better support their customers.
This process led to the introduction of proposal automation,
that allows customers to leverage templates and easily
generate Statements of Work (SOWS), respond to Requests
for Proposal (RFPs) and complete technical questionnaires.
Customers can accelerate their sales process, to win more
business and stay ahead of their competition. Likewise, the
integration of Knowledge Management was derived from
the need to more easily search internal and external
documentation sources to support compliance, ensure
project consistency and accelerate project delivery.
Embracing Industry Challenges
Customers want automation but face immature business
processes:
“Managing and optimizing projects,
professional workforces,
and IT costs.”

“Beyond PSA – a complete platform
that encompasses proposal
automation, knowledge management
and built-in analytics.”
One of the key challenges is to help customers define their
business processes while automating them at the same time.
Upland’s role as a solutions provider is to help guide its
customers and work together to design the best system for
them. Going through this process can have tremendous
benefits to any organization as it helps provide the solution
and business process that they need today, and future-proofs
their implementation for growth.
Single point solutions that don’t meet the full need of the
customer:
Another challenge faced by customers is being underserved
by systems that give broad functionality in many areas
without providing depth of capability. With Upland’s
Tenrox solution, the focus is on designing a robust PSA
platform, then leveraging the Upland Integration Platform
powered by Dell Boomi for bridging to other systems and
provide enterprise-level connectivity. Customers can easily
share business-critical data into and out of 1000s of
software applications, including such as CRM, HCM,
payroll, ERP and more, for a holistic view of their
professional services operations.
Putting Customers First
Customers choose Upland for three reasons. First, its
award-winning cloud-based products are purpose-built for
business needs and make its customer’s best-of-breed
strategies a reality. Second, Upland executes a 100%
customer success commitment, featuring a high-touch
customer success program. Third, Upland has the scale and
resources needed to invest in its customer’s success.
“At Upland, our portfolio reaches beyond Professional
Services Automation. We have multiple software
applications that facilitate numerous enterprise work
management solutions. As we continue to evolve and grow
through strategic acquisitions, we will continue to seek
best-of-breed products that are complementary to our
existing cloud-based applications.” asserts Mr. Hilal.
Client Recommendations
“Real-time business intelligence is core to our business.
Integrating dashboards and reports directly into Tenrox
provides us with an end-to-end PSA experience and is a
vital feature that will benefit any organization.” - Dina
DeMaio Smith, Data and Systems Manager at Vantage
Partners.
“We have worked closely with the Tenrox team at Upland to
make key updates to the Resource Management module.
Upland listened to our inputs and added new features that
make the Resource Management module more user-friendly
and intuitive to all. This allows us to embark on a very
important product consolidation to bring our business
resource management into Tenrox PSA.” - Terry Buckle,
Head of Portfolio and Program Management at OpenBet.
A consumer mindset in a B2B environment:
The proliferation of web-based services for consumer
consumption, and even more recently, the adoption of
mobile applications, has meant that business users have
adopted a consumer-like mindset with regard to the tools
that they use for work. They expect their B2B software to
perform with a consumer-like ease of use. Upland has
embraced this trend and has actively invested in UX/UI
development to deliver software that is accessible and easy
to use, and thus more readily adopted. Furthermore,
because the same UX/UI philosophy is shared across all
Upland products, customers who adopt Tenrox, as well as
other Upland products, gain a consistent experience.

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Company Name
CrossConcept Inc.
crossconceptinc.ca
Management
Walter Perdigao
Co-founder & VP of Services
Tony Abou-Akl
Co-founder & VP of
Development & Support
Brief
CrossConcept is the leading company that develop and
implement PSA software for leading Professional Services
Automation software vendors.
Cloud Coach
cloudcoach.com
Peter Lee
CEO
Cloud Coach is the leading company with unified automation
solutions which enhance organizations overall process with
specialized enterprise-class project management.
ClientFlow
clientflow.com
Abhinav Marla
Product Manager
ClientFlow offers Shared Inbox and Project Management
software for client service teams and consolidates all
conversations, projects and client information into one location.
Forecast
forecast.app
Dennis Kayser
Co-founder & CEO
Forecast is an AI powered resource & project management
platform for companies that care about delivering projects on
time, on scope, and on budget.
Harmony Business
Systems Ltd
harmonypsa.com
Steve Duckworth
Co-founder & CEO
Harmony Business Systems Ltd is a company with the platform
that models and manages whole business.
Haulio
haulio.io
Sebastian Shen
Co-founder & CPO
Haulio is a fast-growing startup backed with leading Ports and
Terminals Group, PSA, and solving a global Container Haulage
infrastructural problem through new thinking and new
technology, and a one stop shop for all your EV needs.
Kimble Applications
kimbleapps.com
Mark Robinson
Chief Marketing
Officer
Kimble Applications, a cloud-based SaaS company, provides a
PSA solution known as Kimble PSA for Force.com, a cloud
computing platform from Salesforce.com.
SimplyBook.me
SimplyBook.me
Ingvar Gudmundsson
Founder
SimplyBook.me is one of the most successful online
appointments scheduling software in the market, signing up
thousands of new users every single month.
TOP Step Consulting
topstepconsulting.com
Upland Software
uplandsoftware.com
Ronn Breaux
President & CEO
Jodi Cicci
Founder & Executive
Advisor
Mounir Hilal
Chief Customer Officer
&
Senior Vice President
TOP Step Consulting is on a mission to enable and empower
Professional Services Organizations to become profitable,
scalable, and efficient.
Upland Software is a leading provider of cloud-based enterprise
work management software.

Abhinav Marla
Product Manager
ClientFlow
ClientFlow
A Comprehensive Project Management
Solutions Provider
good communication is the extension between
confusion and clarity, and teamwork is the core
of incredible success. This phrase is valid in so
many ways, especially when taking a part and working on
collaborative projects. By considering all this, it’s the major
objective to ensure the customer’s satisfaction and the best
methodology when an individual is in the business world.
In an interview with Insights Success, Abhinav Marla,
Product Manager of ClientFlow shares his experience and
gives resourceful insights. In addition to this he has also
shed light over ClientFlow, its products and motto of the
organization along with the future goals in revolutionizing
the industry.
Below are the highlights of the interview conducted
between Abhinav and Insights Success:
Give a brief overview of the company, its uniqueness
and its vision.
ClientFlow is an integrated platform that brings Shared
Inbox Management and Project Management together. With
ClientFlow, You can manage your Personal Email accounts
as well as Shared Email Accounts with your Team on one
platform where you can assign work and
collaborate-in-content. ClientFlow helps managers have an
overview of their team’s activity and give essential
information when necessary through comments.
Following is the feature list:
• Single Platform to manage Personal and Shared Email
accounts.
• In-built Client and Project Management
• Task Management and Time Tracking.
• Message Templates and Mail Tracking
• Assign conversations to Teammates and Follow
conversations to receive updates.
• Internal Comments
• Snooze, Schedule Conversations
• Automated Approval Reminders
• Client/ Project Overview
• Project Templates
• Integrations through Zapier
See all features here
What makes ClientFlow unique is the fully functional Task
and Time Management Module that is tightly integrated
with the Inbox Module which ensures that all your work is
on one Platform. On top of it, there is a layer of Client and
18
|November 2018|

1
Best
Professional
Solution providers 2018
‘‘
Integrated Email and
Project Management of
collaborative teams.
Project Management which helps teams have all their work
organized based on Clients and Project.
ClientFlow envisions transforming email based
collaboration in client service teams.
What are the cutting-edge automation solutions/services
offered by ClientFlow?
ClientFlow provides the following automation solutions:
Easy Approval Tracking: You can send Custom Branded
Approval Requests to Clients via Email. Clients will be
shown the due date and have clear options to Approve or
Reject. As you send approval requests to multiple clients, it
becomes hard to monitor and track them. ClientFlow
provides a Dashboard where you can have an overview of
the approvals based on status. You can send Approval
Reminders or Set an Approval Reminder to be sent based
on a rule. This helps Teams save hours of time per week on
back and forth communication with clients related to
Approval requests.
Message templates: ClientFlow provides Pre built
Message Templates ranging from status updates to invoice
reminders based on best practices. Users can also create
custom templates for their organization. Using Message
templates saves time on composing emails especially when
there is a lot of recurring communication in the
organization.
Project Templates: Teams can create Custom project
Templates based on their workflow and save time on
creating recurring tasks.
horizontally, we ventured into shared inbox management
and eventually task management and time tracking.
Even in the initial stages of the product, we saw a lot of
usage on a daily basis.
We have learnt that products with high adoption need to be
UX-driven. Hence, we spent a lot of time on enhancing the
User Experience.
What are the challenges faced while providing
automation solutions and how is ClientFlow serving to
tackle them?
We have learnt that there is a cost associated with switching
from one solution to another in the automation space. Users
tend to adopt a new solution only if a solution boosts the
efficiency drastically (10x) compared to their existing
solution. We always keep that in mind while designing the
product.
What according to you could be the potential future of
services automation and how does ClientFlow envision
sustaining its competency?
We believe that users of service automation software will
move towards integrated solutions that are customizable to
their workflow.
About the Leader
Abhinav has acquired his Bachelor of Engineering (BE) in
Electronics and Communications Engineering. After his
degree, Abhinav worked with ReportGarden, an agency
management solution on creating a suite of tools such as
Reporting, Budgeting, Invoicing, Proposals, etc. that help
Service businesses automate their workflow. He worked
with a small cross functional team through which he learnt
a lesson of how to take ownership of work and earned
experience in various fields including Marketing (SEO,
PPC, Email & Content), UX Design and Sales (Prospecting,
Deal making & Success).
Abhinav is passionate about building and scaling products
that have a positive impact on people’s lives. He looks
forward to contribute to companies that encourage high
ownership of work across departments that would help him
to develop his analytical mindset, problem-solving and
communication skills.
Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learnt
that have shaped the journey of the company.
We started off as an approval management solution that
would help agency-client communication. Having decided
that there was a lot of scope to expand the business
|November 2018| 19

n an interview with Insights Success, Peter Lee, the
ICEO of Cloud Coach, shares insights on the rapid
success of his company, which specializes in
enterprise-class project, Professional Service Automation
(PSA), and Project Portfolio Management (PPM) software
built for businesses that wish to make strategic investments
in their success. Also, he broadly discusses the company’s
core competencies and its establishment in the market.
Below are the highlights of the interview conducted
between Peter and Insights Success:
What are the cutting-edge automation solutions/services
offered by Cloud Coach?
Our solution is built with best practice processes that
businesses of any type can adapt and follow. Each process
has built-in automation that can be called when specific
business criteria are met, such as automatically creating a
project based on the right template when a sales opportunity
closes, keeping everyone in the business on the same page.
Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons
learned that have shaped the journey of the company.
From the design of the very first line of code, we always
knew we wanted to build a scalable solution that could
handle many thousands of concurrent users on any specific
day, and that influences every decision that we make around
the product. The one thing that has surprised us along the
way, is the way people use the product outside of its
intended use case and having to accommodate those
thoughts in the design process.
What are the challenges faced while providing
automation solutions and how is Cloud Coach serving to
tackle them?
In a professional services business, where the salary (and
overhead) cost of employees is one of the biggest expenses,
being able to drive efficiency across a team’s daily activities
has a huge impact on a company’s bottom line. What we
aim to do is design our product so that it takes a user (no
matter what their role is) the minimum amount of time to
get their job done, saving them time and their company
money.
What according to you could be the potential future of
services automation and how does Cloud Coach envision
sustaining its competency?
The current generation of Professional Services Automation
(PSA) tools relies heavily on the reporting capability
targeted at management, which often leaves the end-users
dissatisfied with their user experience, as they navigate
slow and cumbersome screens with a lot of wasted time.
Cloud Coach, have noticed this disconnect, seeks to fill the
gap with our next-generation management and reporting
PSA tool, which delivers a fantastic experience for end
users saving them considerable time each day, while still
giving the management all the great reporting they need,
such as project profitability, utilization, and revenue
recognition metrics.
Testimonials from Cloud Coach Clients
“I don’t need to do manual spreadsheets to report to the
parent company any longer, saving a lot of hours of my
team’s time.” - Timothy Roberts, VP Customer Success,
Incognito
About the Leader
Peter Lee is the CEO at Cloud Coach with 15 years of
vast experience in refining business initiatives, defining end
to end business processes, developing IT strategies, and
managing the implementation of large scale systems. Peter
holds specialized skills in development of cloud computing
solutions with a focus on Project Management, Billing &
CRM.
Peter also mention that, “As the person that sets our
products’ vision, I’m fairly unique in being able to call on a
background of being both a business manager outside of the
technology industry coupled with consulting experience
inside the technology industry. This gives me the ability to
visualize how different types of users will want to best
interact with a tool and design accordingly.”
About the Company
Cloud Coach specializes in enterprise-class and builds next
generation Professional Service Automation (PSA) and
20
|November 2018|

1
Best
Professional
Solution providers 2018
Project Management tools leveraging the infrastructure of
the SaaS industry leader Salesforce.com. Its vision is to
create user-friendly tools that add valuable time back into a
person’s day, compared to using other PSA tools.
Cloud Coach provides enterprise productivity software that
makes organizations team to simplify its everyday tasks,
increase its productivity and allowing businesses to grow by
giving them the time to concentrate on the core aspects of
the business.
The firm also guides its clients through a complete journey
of finding a solution that would be beneficial to tackle
business problems with the positive and profitable outcome
to their business. Cloud Coach makes sure to become a
good fit for business and being used to the best of its ability.
Too often business productivity software is installed, but
never utilized properly. Its premium consulting and support
system will make sure that Cloud Coach is working for its
clients and helping their business to become successful.
|November 2018| 21

Catching-up
with the
ROBOTICS
for
Better
FUTURE
obots have always been
Rpictured as a man-made
advanced technological
creativity, which do and will favor the
human species for future. As robotics
is vibrantly globalized, soon it will be
mainstreamed in various fields and
sectors. Currently, there are numerous
enterprises worldwide which are
implementing robotics into industrial,
healthcare and commercial use.
Whereas, robotics have experienced a
lot of up’s and down’s during this
tenure, but with the time, it held a
stronghold in the digital world.
Whenever the discussion arises about
the applications of robotics, the
industrial sector has bespoken
benefits’. Robots have become more
affordable, smart and productive over
the years. The sectors like agriculture,
construction, warehousing and
logistics, and customer services. By
investing more in robots, an enterprise
22
|November 2018|

Future-Bots
will be solving certain problems more
accurately and efficiently. Meanwhile,
utilizing robots will help enterprises to
push their limits in order to fill up the
productivity voids.
With each slippage of time, the
technology is upgrading so does the
robotics. The advancements in robotics
field will be a boon to the enterprises in
order to increase growth and
productivity rate. There are certain
parameters that should be considered
while implementing robotics in the
enterprise, such as
Following up Parameters before
Reaching the Depth of Robotics
Modifying; as per the user’s need
Generally, robots used to require
advanced training in order to operate
comfortably. It’s not an issue for the
big enterprises as they acquire the
skilled people to deal with, where the
small enterprises are not so gifted with
loads of assets initially. But, with the
new advances in robotics technologies,
it has become easier for small ventures
to invest in robots for increasing the
productivity generating more revenue.
Just by giving wireless commands
from an IOT, demonstrating tasks to
the robots gets easier. Nowadays, there
are numerous varieties of robots to
carry out multitasks, thus as per the
user’s need, one can invest in robots
for the industrial purpose.
Easily Compatible
Unlike the big manufacturing robots in
huge industries, there are various
collaborative robots which are
specially designed to work alongside
and to assist human workers in a
variety of tasks. Earlier it was sort of
stressful for an enterprise to allot
specific man-power for certain task,
but by implementing co-bots such
issues are resolved. As the size and
shape of co-bots are getting more
compact, it may benefit the enterprises
in various terms.
Easy to Develop
Earlier robots were not able to program
easily due to the incompatibility
between the user interface and
hardware. But, now Robotic Operating
System (ROS) is dominating the
industry by providing solutions for
varied robots in order to perform the
task without lagging. It’s an opensource
framework which helps
developers to redirect the programming
in different ways. This open-source
framework is dominating the growth
towards the constructive direction.
Amplifying the Range of Applied
Robotics
st
The 21 century—is the era of
implementing new ideology and
technologies in various sectors. While
technological disruption has
collectively affected every possible
|November 2018| 23

sector, robotics is still unaffected. From past few years, the
technology, as well as its implementation, has increased
substantially. Have a look on such few areas for possible
applications.
Obliging Enterprises through Robotics
Cobot’s: Assisting Humans
Unlike big manufacturing robots, collaborative robots are
designed to work with employees in enterprises and
corporates. The design is smart enough to assist humans
and also, compact enough to handle. Generally, the small
and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are slightly boon by
implementing co-bots in day to day life, as they are easily
adaptable, easy to process and most importantly it’s
affordable. According to some experts, there’s a possibility
of enormous growth in the business, if Co-bots are
implemented widely. The main motive of industrial robots
is to the prioritized safety of employees and workers, yet
the chances of accidents are always at high risk. Whereas,
co-bots works as a service robot; they come in various
shape and sizes easing the workability and reducing the
liability of employees. In order to get sanctioned as service
robots, any co-bot has to pass certain testing parameters by
robot manufacturing companies, factors such as easily
compatible with other devices and programs, safe in
use, easy to command, and processing at a faster
rate. Currently, co-bots are used for processes
like machine tending, packaging, and material
handling. In spite of industries, co-bots are
used in various sectors such as in farming,
hospitals, healthcare and facilities, and
labs. It does come under
robot-as-a-service format.
with personal robotics cloud which will help robots to take
and give information directly. Depending on the robot, it
can process various functions such as lifting, leveraging,
handle vision, object recognition and other, thus certain
robots acquire such skills and will provide information to
the cloud. Then, this information helps other robots to get
enlightened. In simple words to say, robots will teach other
robots for the better good of the enterprises. On the other
hand, as robots are getting more and more evolved, filtering
of essential information from rest will get much easier. This
will comfort both big and small enterprises to manage big
data more precisely.
With the emergence of advancement in robotics, they are on
the verge to touch skies already. If considering the above
possible factors, this evergreen era of robotics is less likely
to get saturated due to technological disruption. As the
technologies are growing faster, the enterprises must to
catch-up with them accordingly. It’s high time to implement
new technologies especially of the robotics as its utilization
is not only subjected to warehouses but also, towards the inhouse
enterprise work. Hopefully, there’s a possibility of
robot-oriented industries in the future.
Cloud Robotics
Imagine an enterprise with
robots that are totally independent
to the user commands, in other
words, no external programming
may require in order to process robots
for the various tasks. In accordance to
that, a User Interface to be exact might not
be needed in the future, as machine learning is
already on its verge to get explored. Currently, in
order to carry out certain tasks robots are been told to
what to do using the interface whereas, cloud robotics
directly twitch compatible code from the clouds which
are required for the tasks. To work alongside with
humans, robots must be deep learning the subjects
simultaneously able to point out problems and provide
solutions right away. Meanwhile, it will be a boon for the
enterprises if the employees will get to interact with robots
as a personified object rather than a machine. Soon, there
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|November 2018|

CrossConcept:
Simplicity is the Future
Back in 2010, two partners named Walter and Tony
who had been developing and implementing PSA
software for leading software vendors joined hands
and founded CrossConcept. Within the founders and
subsequent employees, CrossConcept have hundreds of
years of combined experience helping service
organizations to automate their processes. Since its
inception, the company’s clients have ranged in size from a
handful of people to more than thirty thousand.
Later in 2017, CrossConcept launched its very own PSA
solution called CrossConcept Continuum PSA using its
years of real-world industry experience. CrossConcept’s
PSA solution contains a carefully curated feature set
focusing on best practice functionality that service
organizations actually use. Its user interface is laser
focused on minimizing clicks and on being intuitive. Frontline
employees find it a helpful planning tool catered to
their personal needs, rather than a necessary evil enforced
by management. This focus on effective simplicity colors
not only the CrossConcept Continuum product but all
aspects of doing business with the company.
CrossConcept’s roots are based as a service company and
while it has transitioned to be a software developer, it will
always consider itself a service company first that provides
a fantastic PSA tool. Partnering with customers to help
make them successful will always be CrossConcept’s core
value.
In 2018, CrossConcept’s amazing work was recognized by
both the TopChoiceAwards and ThreeBestRated for the
organization’s innovative mindset and outstanding service.
CrossConcept took home the award for “Best IT Service”
from both awarding companies.
The organization’s vision as a business is to become the
number one PSA vendor worldwide by leveraging its
innovative, intuitive and cutting-edge solution along with
its award-winning services.
Going Beyond Traditional PSA Solutions
CrossConcepts Continuum provides service organizations
with an all-in-one, modern professional services SaaS
solution that is easy to implement, simple to use and can be
customized in order to scale with a customer’s needs today
and in the future. CrossConcept Continuum goes beyond
traditional PSA solutions available today mainly by
incorporating cutting-edge UI technology, which makes the
solution more user-friendly, resulting in fewer clicks within
the solution and time spent logging data. CrossConcept
claims an innovation in their time-scheduling module
which offers the end-user functionality that has never been
seen before in PSA.
Additionally, CrossConcept Continuum has been built
from the ground up to easily integrate with accounting
systems and seamlessly synchronize projects and
accounting within one unified system. Their innovative
PSA solution allows organizations to maximize
profitability by seamlessly connecting projects and
financial accounting, enabling users to manage all stages of
their project from conception to completion and deliver on
their promises. CrossConcept Continuum is a simple, yet
powerful PSA solution built with the end-user in mind.
Fast, flexible, powerful and user friendly!
The Immensely Experienced Leaders
With more than 25 years of experience in the IT sector,
Walter Perdigao, the Co-founder and VP of Services
heads up the services side of the organization. He’s
passionate about information technology and is a proud
gadget geek- & owns just about every type of personal
technology that one can think of. He’s equally passionate
about getting the right tools in the hands of businesses of
all sizes to help them succeed.
Tony Abou-Akl is the other Co-founder and the VP of
Development and Support. He commenced his career
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CrossConcept Continuum is
the world’s most innovative,
intuitive and flexible PSA
solution available on the
market today.
Tony Abou- Akl
Co-founder & VP
of Development
& Support
Walter Perdigao
Co-founder & VP
of Services
mmediately after graduating and since then has thrived
iin the Computer Science field. As a key developer for
one of Canada’s premier PSA solutions, Tony’s
entrepreneurial spirit inspired him. He wanted more - he
wanted a company that was first class, prided itself on
support of both customers and employees alike. In 2010
CrossConcept Inc, was founded and quickly exceeded their
goals as a premier third-party service provider. As years
went by, Tony once again believed they could do better.
Along with his partner he spent years listening to
customers which resulted in the development of their very
own world class PSA solution; and voila! CrossConcept
Continuum was born.
Tackling Challenges with a Comprehensive Solution
CrossConcept believes businesses are often forced to
implement a PSA solution that is too complex for their
needs or even worse - give up features they need by rolling
out a low-end solution due to cost restrictions.
CrossConcept Continuum fits perfectly in the middle,
providing rich functionality for SME businesses at a
competitive price point with the ability to scale as your
business grows. Simplicity is the key game changer in PSA
and CrossConcept Continuum offers just that.
Lastly, the CrossConcept team have decades of combined
experience working on small, medium and large PSA
implementations since the late 90’s. The founders and
team’s real-world experience is what drove and shaped the
creation of CrossConcept Continuum.
A Satisfied Clientele
“CrossConcept Continuum PSA makes it easier for me to
do my job as CEO. I don’t think of it as just a PSA system,
but rather as a business solution that enables me to
manage my entire business on a daily basis. We’ve seen a
monthly calculated saving of 18.5% on time usually spent
using legacy systems, spreadsheets, and outdated
methods”- Brian Pavlidis, President, Net2Net IT Solutions.
“CrossConcept’s PSA resources provided Hitachi Data
Systems with business consultation to help us quickly
achieve our objectives. Their deep knowledge of PSA and
open and collaborative approach were vital to helping our
professional services organization develop complex logic
and supporting reports to increase productivity and run
our business more efficiently.” - Michiko Nielsen,
Operations Manager Global Solution Services, Hitachi
Data Systems
|November 2018| 27

Delivering Exemplary Haulage Solutions
As a revolutionary collaborative
B2B platform for the
Container Haulage industry,
Haulio aims to be the simplest & most
reliable way for businesses to take care
of their transportation and haulage
needs on land. The Haulio Community
portal aims to maximize haulage
resources through industry-level
sharing to improve job productivity
and asset utilization; at the same time,
value-add to end customers with
improved real-time visibility and
reporting.
Game Changing Technology
Sebastian Shen
Co-founder & CPO
Haulio’s platform works by
intelligently matching targeted jobs to
haulage companies “hauliers” and their
prime movers, using advanced
algorithms and IoT technology that
optimizes jobs’ specifications to
locations, prime movers’ sizes and
availability. With its technology,
Haulio hopes to rewrite the rules of
container haulage to ensure that every
stakeholder stands to gain – the
hauliers, drivers, forwarders, cargo
owners and port operators.
A Profound Leader
Sebastian Shen is the Co-founder and
Chief Product Officer of Haulio. He is
responsible for the users’ happiness
and the product roadmap, ensuring that
Haulio delivers tremendous value for
hauliers towards Haulio’s end vision.
Sebastian, along with his team ensures
that every ounce of their efforts spent
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1
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Professional
Solution providers 2018
on building the product is made to bring the entire
ecosystem closer to industry 4.0. This starts with ensuring
that digitalization of information is achieved with every
single haulier on the platform, allowing the company to
truly deploy its suite of intelligent systems across the
industry.
Prior to Haulio, Sebastian was a Business and Tech
consultant at 2359 Media, one of the leading technology
studios in Singapore and the South-East Asian region –
helping his clients marry the latest in mobile and web
technologies to their real business challenges. His notable
projects involved chatbots with the Singapore Airlines,
contactless technologies with the Singapore Tourism Board
and delivery management solutions with ST Logistics.
Sebastian graduated from the National University of
Singapore. Currently, he is pursuing a master’s Degree in
Supply Chain Management at the National University of
Singapore, which he has put on hold due to his full-time
involvement with Haulio.
The ON-Demand Concept
Haulio was first launched in May 2017 as a gateway to
PSA’s Inter-Terminal Haulage through an “on-demand”
concept via its platform. It was a tripartite agreement
between PSA, Haulio and the Haulier companies executing
the jobs. Initially, it had to go around knocking doors to
convince the hauliers that these “on-demand” jobs can now
offer a new flexibility for their drivers to generate revenue
even during lull periods, night shifts and weekends/public
holidays. This gradual mindset shift helps the companies
realize that “something is better than nothing”. They have
since successfully hauled over 70,000 TEUs till date.
Shifting the Mindset
Apart from the technological challenges in its platform, the
biggest obstacle for Haulio and its business is that it takes a
lot of effort to convince industry stakeholders of its mission.
Thus, conversion cycles can take a long time, and the
implementation of technology to traditional business
workflows take a long time too.
Changing the mind-set of business owners to trust and
accept the concept of a sharing economy in the haulage
space is another challenge for Haulio. The supply chain
ecosystem is made up of various stakeholders and
departments that have differing KPIs. It thus takes time for
the industry to align and adapt, before it can fully move
towards a digital platform for the booking and execution of
their daily Container Haulage requirements. Indeed, Haulio
“To be Southeast Asia’s
Leading Digital
Haulage Platform –
Powered by Technology,
Empowered by People.”
is seeing increasing receptiveness as it continuously proves
itself with its technology and actions.
Industry-wide Facilitator
Haulage is a significant, yet often overlooked segment in
the automated and connected world of industry 4.0. With
the advancements of energy lines, the requirements and
demands of just-in-time delivery of containers will only
rise. At the same time, the new digital era also means the
increasing need for machine-to-machine, systems-tosystems
communication to ensure that digital and physical
flow of goods are well collaborated.
These are demands that traditional service providers will
face tremendous difficulty keeping pace with. Haulio comes
in as an industry-wide facilitator, to usher every haulier into
this future of clock-worked automated future through its
collaborative platform.
Emblem of Satisfaction
“With Haulio today, we are able to attempt to (achieve
efficiency) by getting jobs from the platform whenever we
have a dip in volume to manage for the day.” – LSHK
Trading & Transport Co.
“Haulio is a fantastic alternative revenue on days that we
have insufficient jobs and they are able to fill up our load
seamlessly through their simple and interactive platform.”
– UBTS Pte Ltd
“In Haulio, we can optimize our operations better by
responding to the jobs posted at our lull periods.” – Union
Transport Co Pte Ltd
|November 2018| 29

Blockchain:
The Next Opportunity for
Better, Safer, Smarter Cities
About the Author: Gianni Minetti
Passionate and eclectic technology
expert, Gianni Minetti is the President
and CEO, Paradox Engineering SA has
about 25 years of business experience
in information and telecommunication
systems, with peculiar interests in
Internet of Things, smart technologies,
blockchain and cryptography. In 2005
he founded Paradox Engineering as
the vehicle for bringing his unique
technology vision to the market
through pioneer IoT platforms for
Smart Cities and Smart Factories. He
is currently President and CEO of the
Company, which has been part of
MinebeaMitsumi Group since July
2015. Gianni is also chair of the
Southern Alps Chapter of the Crypto
Valley Association, active investor
and advisor to several blockchain
venture projects. He is based in
Ticino, Switzerland.
Today, about 55% of the
world’s population lives in
urban areas, but this share is
expected to increase to 68% by 2050.
Combined with the overall growth of
global population, this could add
another 2.5 billion people to urban
areas by 2050, with close to 90% of
this increase taking place in Asia and
Africa, as reported by the United
Nations’ 2018 Revision of World
Urbanization Prospects.
Since the world continues to
urbanize, a wiser and far-sighted
management of urban resources is
more and more needed, especially in
low-income and lower-middleincome
countries where the pace of
urbanization is projected to be the
fastest. Smart technologies and smart
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|November 2018|

Leadership Viewpoint
urban platforms can support City managers in tackling
the increasing demand for energy, infrastructures,
affordable housing, well-connected mobility systems,
healthcare and education, as well as quality of life and
jobs.
To understand how smart technologies work, we should
picture Cities as distributed communication systems,
where urban objects – think of streetlights, meters,
parking lots, waste bins, Wi-Fi hotspots, video
surveillance cameras, etc. – are not dumb, isolated
devices, but smart nodes of a citywide network. With the
Internet of Things (IoT), all these objects are injected
with intelligence and acquire the capability to receive
and transmit data and execute commands, thus enabling
remote monitoring and dynamic, adaptive control
functions.
Acquiring and correlating data from urban assets is a
significant step forward to improve quality of public
services and citizen satisfaction, reduce energy
consumption, optimize costs and simplify processes for
City operators and managers. Even more, it provides
actionable information to feed strategic decisions about
services efficiency and improvements, and take
evidence-based actions where and when needed.
Let’s apply what we’ve just described to a basic service
such as street lighting. By connecting street lamps to a
wireless IoT network, it becomes possible to turn them
on/off and adjust brightness according to daily solar
times and ambient light levels, defining variable patterns
for working and festive days, residential and industrial
districts. Sensors can be integrated to bring lights up
when human or vehicle presence is detected, and on
demand actions can be triggered in real time for single or
grouped lamps – for instance when a car accident or an
emergency requires intense lighting in a specific area.
It is proven that implementing LED lighting and an IoT
remote management and control platform can cut energy
consumption and greenhouse emissions up to 70%.
|November 2018| 31

Moreover, connected lamps can
monitor key operating parameters
and automatically report failures,
generating extra savings on
maintenance costs. Considering LED
technologies last about 50% longer
than traditional light sources, the US
Federal Department of Energy
estimated that if the entire country
converted to LED lighting over the
next 20 years, it would save a total of
USD 120 billion.
Even more interesting developments
are possible with blockchain
technology, which can make Smart
Cities far more secure, transparent,
efficient and resilient. As an original
combination of mature technological
concepts, including peer-to-peer
networks, distributed consensus
algorithms, validity rules, ledger
technologies and cryptography,
blockchain can be successfully
applied in any domain where
stakeholders’ relations are based on
trust and may be entirely
disintermediated. This is particularly
true in Cities, as they rely on
accurate, secure, authentic and
trustworthy information exchanges to
deliver services to people and
businesses.
About energy distribution, for
instance, blockchain-based metering
solutions can accelerate the adoption
of real-time differential pricing
models and encourage users to
participate to power generation by
connecting their renewable energy
microgrids to the main grid. In water
networks, blockchain technologies
enable smart contracts and validated
rules to automate water supply in the
most possible efficient manner,
minimizing leakages and tampering.
Blockchain technology can be
combined with IoT solutions to
provide better waste collection
services: it allows to accurately track
waste input and optimize waste truck
routes upon parameters like bin
status, filling levels, etc. This
increases service quality and
efficiency, and generates further
savings on fuel expenses and overall
maintenance costs. Garbage-related
data could also support the
introduction of customized fees for
household and commercial users,
thus rewarding recycling and correct
waste separation.
Coming to public government and
administration, blockchain can be
used to automate and digitalize civil
registries, as well as property, real
estate and business registries,
generating notable cost savings and
increasing quality of service.
Considering citizen participation,
blockchain-based voting platforms
can improve present, analogue
electoral systems by achieving
secure, anonymous and unique
voting in a decentralized manner.
Same platforms can be used to poll
citizens on specific urban initiatives,
making sure contributions from civil
society are recognized in Smart City
planning and development.
Blockchain technology is still in its
early days, but most experts agree it
has a potential for disruption. And
some pioneer experiences – from
Dubai to Tokyo, from New York to
Tallinn – demonstrate that benefits
for Smart Cities can really be
worthwhile.
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|November 2018|

Kimble
Applications
Revolutionizing PSA Solutions in the Cloud
rofessional Services Automation (PSA) is a software
Psolution for professional services which uses
technology to improve business performance.
Kimble, which is native to the Salesforce platform, is linked
with CRM. This supports better matching of resources with
demand, better project delivery, and more accurate
forecasting. It is designed to enable a more forward-looking
approach to running a services business. It also integrates
smoothly with other apps such as various accounting
packages.
Kimble Applications, a cloud-based software-as-a-service
company, provides a professional services automation
(PSA) solution known as Kimble PSA for Force.com, a
cloud computing platform from Salesforce.com.
Kimble was founded in 2010 in London, UK, by Sean
Hoban, Mark Robinson, and David Scott, each with
entrepreneurship backgrounds in IT consulting and
enterprise software companies. Since then, it has become an
international business with offices in London and in North
America - Boston, Park City, Chicago, and Atlanta. The
firm dedicatedly provides ongoing PSA support to services
businesses all over the world.
Kimble PSA is designed to drive business consistency and
growth, with a unique combination of resourcing
intelligence, delivery management, and business foresight.
The organization also integrates its functionality with other
complementary apps.
34
Mark Robinson
Chief Marketing Officer
KimbleApplications
Kimble digitizes best practice for service organizations,
allowing efficient access to talent networks and optimizing
value creation. The firm helps professional services
businesses by improving business performance, increasing
visibility, and providing enhanced company collaboration.
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Kimble is dedicated to the production of unique
management solutions delivered through a
software-as-a-service (SaaS) model.
Leading-edge with Automation Solutions
Powered by real-time data, Kimble’s augmented
intelligence and analytics deliver the information required
to improve how a business is run and the forward-looking
insight that helps plan for the future.
In supporting a diverse set of requirements from both
services and product companies, Kimble deploys
experience and innovation from a broad range of industries
to support the most functionally rich solution in
Professional Services Automation. The app offers
category-leading capabilities and ease of use in revenue
forecasting and recognition, resource planning, project
management, budget and margin control, mobile time and
expenses, period management, and billing.
These are the unified services offered by Kimble:
• Implementation Services: Kimble is architected to be
configured through settings and data rather than relying
on the use of a coding language. Its implementation team
will support its customers through the adoption of
Kimble, using a series of business-led activities from
which the configuration and deployment are driven.
• Training Services: Kimble’s training team provides team
training for the project during on-boarding that ensures
that organizations’ staff develop a strong understanding of
the capabilities of Kimble rapidly.
• Professional Services: Kimble is a highly scalable and
configurable application which can evolve with its
customers changing business. Its aim is to empower its
customer to manage these activities by themselves, with
the availability of its additional support.
• Support Services: Kimble’s dedicated product support
combines the expertise of highly trained professionals
with an extensive knowledge base.
Sovereignty with Expertise
Professional
Automation solutions
to the next level.
‘‘Taking
Consultancy Company, Fulcrum Solutions, in 1997 with no
external investment, and in just under 3 years it had reached
200 staff with offices in Edinburgh, Manchester, London,
and New York.
Stepping Ahead through Challenges
The Kimble team is proud of creating a PSA which delivers
real value for its customers – Kimble PSA scores highest
for customer satisfaction and speed-to-value among the
leading PSA solutions on crowd review site G2 Crowd.
“I am proud that for a good group of us, this is the 4th
company we have worked in together, and at Kimble, we
have an amazing team of people that operate without ego,
and genuinely work together for the greater good,”
Robinson said.
Adopting PSA generally involves working in new ways to
take advantage of the potential the technology creates to
make better decisions more quickly. Managing change often
presents a challenge. Kimble is expanding its customer
success organization and works in partnership with
customers, continuing to embed Augmented Intelligence
and to take advantage of all the capabilities of the
Salesforce platform to deliver proven customer benefit.
Mark Robinson is the Chief Marketing Officer at Kimble
Communications. He has over 30 years’ experience in the
IT industry and as a serial entrepreneur. Mark started his
career in management consulting before working for Oracle
Corporation. Since co-founding Kimble, he has been
focused on helping service organizations to improve
business performance, regularly contributing to events such
as TSW and Dreamforce. Mark started his first IT
|November 2018| 35

T
he
Shift
that
broke
the pendulum
Murray Oles
President
CHALEX Corp
About the Author
Murray Oles is the President of
CHALEX Corp. The company is specialized
in Workow Management for Marketing
Communications Projects through the use of
SmartFlo and integrated third party tools.
Corporations are shifting their
marketing services in-house
and re-defining relationships
with their suppliers. This is a strategic
shift brought about by a confluence of
technical, social and political change on
a global scale. At the core of this
movement is the corporation’s need to
control global brand messaging quickly
in an increasingly regulated world. Is
this a temporary shift or is there more
to it, and how far might it go?
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|November 2018|

Virtuoso’s Vision
The rise of mobile computing combined with an explosion
in SaaS software development has led to more intuitive
purpose-built applications with built in learning tools. The
net effect is that corporations can do much more with less.
Hence, the rapidly accelerating move to take internal
control of the corporate global supply chain. More
specifically, control of process, digital assets, resources, and
the brand message. Evidence of the shift can be seen in
global corporations like P&G who in recent years
consolidated their packaging prepress supply chain from
hundreds of companies to only three. The ANA
(Association of National Advertisers) committee for
in-house agencies includes members from hundreds of the
Fortune 1000. A Google search reveals many recent articles
detailing the rise of in-house ad agencies.
The drivers of this shift are affordable and effective new
technology and the need for speed to market. The value of a
middleman controlling portions of the marcom workflow
has diminished. This does not mean that everything is being
produced in-house, just internally controlled and managed
by in-house staff who are defining new best practices for
their agile enterprise. Many companies go back and forth
between insourcing and outsourcing, but this time it is
different. Companies are focused on process, and it is not
just marketing, legal and business analytics, recruiting,
employee services and even providing in-house healthcare.
With change comes opportunity. Demand for business
process management tools is growing rapidly. Many new
companies are developing SaaS products to further enable
the agile business. Online workflow modeling and business
process management tools are becoming main stream. File
sharing and digital asset management services are widely
accepted. Integrating these services to meet the
requirements of a project has never been easier now that
RESTful APIs have become widely available. Artificial
intelligence applied to big data analytics will provide the
agile business with insights previously inconceivable. Best
of all, the enterprise can securely access most SaaS services
without making any upfront investments or long term
commitments.
At the core of the agile business is an integrated business
process management platform. This is the tool that enables
distributed process control. In-house is only practical when
the technology enables the staff to do an order of magnitude
more with less. BPM systems capture huge amounts of data
that can be analyzed as a service in real-time. The ability to
analyze any combination of process and behavioral data
yields valuable predictive insights. Standards such as
BPMN notation and the XPDL file format have allowed
developers to simplify the user experience for defining,
managing, and sharing process maps across BPM
platforms. A virtual task can automatically serve up the
tools the user will need. SaaS tools have one thing in
common. They can be called through a RESTful API
without the need for a software developer. The workflow
can be configured to invoke access to tools based on the
nature of the task. For healthcare workflows a digital
radiology file format (DICOM Web) enables secure
cross-platform viewing and collaboration over a patient’s
scanned images and medical history.
Business agile companies adjust to market conditions faster
by adopting a culture of managed change. It is no longer
acceptable to be so disconnected from your projects that
you can’t even access your own brand packaging and
promotion files. The same is true for legal, regulatory and
compliance work. The agile company controls all of these
processes. Their DAM enabled BPM system interacts with
a SaaS reporting service like EZBI that concatenates and
reports on data across distributed systems. Lean
manufacturing and Six Sigma programs are used to
configure these systems to monitor compliance to regulated
processes.
These changes are far more profound than may appear on
the surface. The gig economy is fueling a virtual cottage
industry that circles the globe. Project managers are
increasingly in demand. This is not just an IT thing, every
business runs on projects. The certified project management
professional PMP is a new college certification. Rachel
Burger in a Capterra article explained The 5 Biggest Project
Management Trends Shaping 2018. In brief, “business
agile” is the new way of doing business. A visit to the
Fiverr.com web site will show how one SaaS service is
bringing buyers and sellers of creative services together.
This in-house trend is not just another swing of the
pendulum.
|November 2018|
37

“ The secret of my success is that we have gone to
exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world”
- Steve Jobs
The said quote itself explains the power of recruiting ‘right’
candidate. A right candidate has the potential to transform an
organization fortune to a new level. A right candidate brings
quality and effectiveness that builds a brand and develops a
unique customer experience, while a ‘wrong’ candidate can lead
to a lot of extra stress and issues that can hinder the
development of a business. But at the core, hiring right talent is
important, and this is where HR personnel struggle the most.
With the advent of an emerging technique known as “People
Analytics”, hiring right candidate will get easy than ever before.
Necessity of People Analytics
Competition for onboarding top talent is getting fierce,
especially in industries, like IT, financial service firms,
healthcare sector, and manufacturing, that are going to witness a
massive transformation. Ever growing numbers of job seekers,
shaken economy and neck-to-neck ruthless competition are
making HR’s job even more challenging to find right talent for
the right job. One technique that is seen as a solution for the said
problem is “People Analytics”. It is an emerging field that is
pulling everyone’s attention due to its potential to assist HR
people in recruiting the right talent.
38 |November 2018|

Tech Trend
Understanding People Analytics
People analytics or HR analytics is the application of
statistics, mathematics, and modeling which collects and
process worker-related data to see and predict patterns. This
technique assist organizations to predict whether a
particular person fit for a given job or not. Due to its ability
to boost hiring and retaining the right talent, some people
have gone so far that they have even started calling it as a
“crystal ball for HR”.
How ‘People Analytics’ can help HR fraternity
• Identifying the features or variables in jobs and
employees that matter/counts most
• Matching those important job variables with a pool of
applicants or recruits
• Predicting the likelihood of a worker to stay on the job for
a long time or to “churn”
• And recommending salaries and other compensation to
bolster longevity
Importance of Peoples Analytics
There are lots of important questions that arise into the mind
of management peoples like: How can we find more top
performers? What do our most successful leaders do to
excel at their work, and how can we replicate that across the
organization? Which people are most likely to stay for long?
Which employees are likely to leave? With the right
analytical tool in hand, one can get the right and accurate
answers to these vital questions which plays a pivotal role in
shaping company’s fortune and can assist an organization to
maintain a robust workforce.
Popular HR Analytics Tools
Power BI
Power BI link multiple sources like SQL database with
people’s data, live twitter feed, machine learning API’s and
more. All these different data sources are then combined
with an aggregation process to create one large database.
|November 2018|
39

The consolidated data then can be used to create pivot table to let end user get a quick insight in the key areas of the
workforce. And, all these meaningful insights then the end user can see in a user-friendly manner with Power BI’s
dash boarding capacity.
SPSS
Dealing with analytics requires some sort of technical capability to make the most of it. But what if the end user is not
a technical person but still want the same results which can be derived from the above tool. Answer to this said
concern is ‘SPSS’ tool. Without having extensive statistical knowledge, an end user can do an exploratory correlation
analysis or a quick regression analysis. This makes SPSS one of the most commonly used HR analytics tools in social
sciences.
Rstudio
It is a people analytical tool which is best suited to process huge data sets. It provides valuable insights that can help
an organization to maintain robust workforce. It’s potential to let end user visualize and statistically analyze candidate
data with the help of user friendly interface is the prime reason behind its popularity.
Interesting Research Finding
Many recent studies even proved the effectiveness and productivity of People Analytics techniques. Recently,
Deloitte’s Bersin found that organizations that use people analytics techniques at a sophisticated level reported 82
percent higher three-year average profits than corporations without properly-deployed people analytics methods.
Over the world more number of schools, colleges, and universities are opening up than ever before. There is an
increased awareness for education as well. More people want to get access to quality education to raise their living
standards. All these are resulting into increased number of job seekers. With business competition going intense with
each passing year, recruiting right talent has become the need of hour for HR personnel. The potential benefit of
People Analytics will then definitely assist HR fraternity in recruiting and maintaining a robust workforce if applied
meticulously.
40 |November 2018|

The Pioneers of Appointment Scheduling Services
Ingvar Gudmundsson
Founder
In an interview
with Insights
Success, Ingvar
Gudmundsson, Founder of
SimplyBook.me, shares his
experience and gives resourceful
insights. In addition to this he has also
emphasized on SimplyBook.me, its
products, and motto of the organization
along with the future goals in revolutionizing
the industry.
Below are the highlights of the interview conducted
between Ingvar and Insights Success:
Give a brief overview of the company, its uniqueness, and
its vision.
SimplyBook.me was launched as a product in 2011 after having
been operated under the name DoReserve.com for couple of years.
Fortunately, we realized soon enough that the old name and signup process was
hindering the growth of the company. After the name change technical bloggers started
mentioning SimplyBook.me. Google started ranking it higher, and visitor number increased
rapidly along with signups. Today, SimplyBook.me signs up over 5,000 new companies from around
the world every month and fortune 500 companies have adopted our enterprise booking solution. Our
goal now is to increase our reach further by entering individual markets and countries with local based
teams. This will be done directly by ourselves and in joint ventures with local partners.
What are the cutting-edge automation solutions/services offered by SimplyBook.me?
SimplyBook.me already offers users to accept bookings through chat bots and even through the use of
voice bots, where the whole booking takes place through conversation. We believe that this is the
future; people will talk to their devices and ask to book an appointment, which will then be done
automatically through voice bots.
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1
Best
Professional
Solution providers 2018
Give a detailed description of your influence over the
SimplyBook.me and the automation (professional
services) industry?
Currently, I am holding the position as VP of sales where I
mainly focus on sales of SimplyBook.me solution to
enterprises which use the system for various kinds of
appointment bookings within their firms and towards their
clients.
SimplyBook.me’s customers can be split into two groups,
enterprise clients and smaller services businesses. The
enterprise clients can be worldwide service companies, IT
companies, banks etc. and the smaller service businesses
range from beauty salons, medical professionals, fitness
centers, schools and basically all other service industries
where appointment booking is needed.
Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learnt
that have shaped the journey of the company.
Notando, an Iceland firm which is the owner of
SimplyBook.me, was established in 2001 to create online
financial accounting software. The company was doing fine
until the financial crash hit Iceland hard and around 50% of
the clients of the old accounting solution got wiped out and
the company had to act fast.
SimplyBook.me was created soon after the collapse of the
financial industry of Iceland. A large portion of the staff was
let go and the rest concentrated on this new appointment
scheduling solution. This was in 2008 and for many years it
was growing very slowly until the strategic decisions of
changing the name (from DoReserve.com to
SimplyBook.me) and simplification of the registration
process were taken. For many years me and Mike, the CTO,
took care of all customer support, which was good because
then we could act quick on issues and good requests but as
we were very few our efforts were spread thin. Fortunately
we hung in there and after the name change it only took
about 2 years to come into profit which allowed us to start
to hire support people. Our support people have proven to
be of incredibly high importance as they are the first line of
contact with clients. Building our high quality support team
and providing our clients with LiveChat was without a
doubt one of the best decisions we have taken.
What are the challenges faced while providing
automation solutions and how is SimplyBook.me serving
to tackle them?
Automation is very important in many aspects of the
SimplyBook.me solution. The solution allows providers to
accept appointments and fills their diaries automatically; it
then reminds both the clients and providers of upcoming
appointments automatically. If a client has not showed up
for a service over an abnormally long period the system can
remind him to book again automatically. As was already
mention the system can even answer the phone for the user
“SimplyBook.me helps service
based companies to work
effectively with a solution
that makes them stand
out as professionals.”
and accept bookings there directly and fill the calendar
automatically. All of these things save time for everyone,
increase the service level, and best of all’ it increases the
revenues of the system users as they get more bookings
from old clients, they get more clients because they are
available to accept bookings 24/7 and this in turns means
more revenues and profits.
What according to you could be the potential future of
services automation and how does SimplyBook.me
envision sustaining its competency?
SimplyBook.me will continue to work hard on enabling our
users to be more competitive and use automation to its
fullest. It will increase and it will continue to take over
many jobs all over the world. I am though confident that the
industry we serve will stay resilient for many years to come
as it needs the human factor. A good example of this is that
there is no massage chair that replaces a human massage;
there is no robot able to cut the hair of people with the
details that clients expect. However we will need to
continue to invent so that our users can get the most out of
automation technology. We saw earlier this year when the
Google voice assistance bot that was making calls to real
people, and people could not distinct the difference and
thought they were speaking with a human. I presume that
within months the Google voice assistance will be
calling-out for people to make appointments for them. Our
system is already ready to accept such calls and decide with
the Google voice bot what booking time will suit the client.
We will continue to develop hard to make our users ready
for all such new developments.
Testimonials from SimplyBook.me Clients
“We were set up and live on our website with the booking
tool in less than 10 minutes from purchasing”
“SimplyBook.me made it super easy for our patients to
book appointments and it is even easier for us to manage
our bookings in an efficient manner.”
|November 2018| 43

About the Author
Mr. Jay Klein drives Voyager Lab’s technology
strategy and core intellectual property. He brings
more than 25 years of experience in data analytics,
networking and telecommunications to the Company.
Before joining Voyager Labs, he served as CTO at
Allot Communications where he steered Allot’s data
inspection and analytics core technology offerings,
and as VP Strategic Business Development at DSPG,
where he was responsible for strategic technology
acquisitions. He also co-founded and held the CTO
position at Ensemble Communications while founding
and creating WiMAX and IEEE 802.16. He also
served as the CTO and VP of R&D at CTP Systems,
acquired rst by DSP Communications and later by
Intel. Jay Klein holds a BSc in Electronics & Electrical
Engineering from Tel Aviv University as well as
numerous patents in various technology elds.
With so much attention focused on Artificial
Intelligence (AI), it’s worth remembering that
one size does not fit all. There are specific
business-related pain points in mind when a company
decides to deploy AI technology, so making the right
choices can be a tricky task.
For example, several months ago, an AI related
breakthrough was announced – a robot learned and
demonstrated the ability to perform a perfect backflip.
While it is well acknowledged that the invested research
and development for this mission was huge and the
commercial potential for some applications is enormous, it
is somewhat unclear how this specific innovation or the
core models and algorithms of it, can serve other industries
and verticals. Herein lies the problem.
AI: From
Artificial
to Authentic
Gauging AI success in one field in many cases can be
meaningless for another. To make things worse, even when
trying to go deeper into the technology and attempting to
evaluate, for example, which Machine Learning algorithms
are utilized by the product, or what are the number of
layers in the Deep Neural Network models mentioned by
specific vendors, in the end it will be possibly pointless as
it does not directly reflect the solution deployment
‘success’ implications.
Nevertheless, it seems that the market ignores this reality
and continues to evaluate AI-based products by buzzword
checklists using familiar and related AI terminology (e.g.,
44
|November 2018|

Maestros Insights
Supervised, Unsupervised, Deep Learning etc.). While
checklists are an effective tool for comparative analysis it
still requires the ‘right’ items to be included.
Unfortunately, what typically is absent are the items which
are important to the customer, from a problem-solution
perspective.
Introducing Authentic AI
Given all of this, there is a need to change the narrative
around AI technology and solutions to something
meaningful and authentic that reflects the real-life
challenges and opportunities that businesses are facing.
This is the time to introduce Authentic AI.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines ‘Authentic’ as
both ‘worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming to or
based on fact’ and ‘conforming to an original so as to
reproduce essential features’. This is not about ‘Fake’ to be
contrasted with ‘Real’. It’s about the essential features of
AI which need to be acknowledged, and hence, redefine
the ‘checklist’. Often, these essential ‘authentic’ features
are hidden and only surface when a CIO/CDO is faced
with a new problem to be solved. This is seen especially
when the AI aspects of a proposed product or solution are
fully explored by asking questions such as:
- Is the AI technology utilized by the product aimed
specifically for my problem, optimally (e.g.,
performance, cost, etc.)?
- Is it capable of addressing the complete problem or
only a part of it?
- Can it be assimilated into the existing ecosystem
without imposing new demands?
- Can it address the compelling environmental
conditions of the problem space?
These issues can be grouped into three different ‘classes’ -
‘Original’, ‘Holistic’ and ‘Pragmatic’:
Original – How innovative is the solution? This can be
quantified by assessing the following:
- the invention of new algorithms or even new models
and
- the use of complex orchestration techniques or
- through the capability to handle complex data formats
and structures.
While there is no need to re-invent the wheel repetitively
for any problem, there are distinctive characteristics which
require optimizing.
Holistic – How complete is the proposed AI technology? It
takes into account the capability of handling the end-to-end
aspects of the solution, the competence of harmonizing the
operation of the various AI components of the solution and
the ability to adapt to ever changing conditions of the AI
application.
Pragmatic – Can the technology solve real world
problems in their actual and natural space in a
commercially viable way? This means that for example the
data sources can be processed in their most native format
(both unstructured or structured) as well as provide
insights or results matching the pragmatic needs of the
specific market expectations. In addition, the ability to be
quickly deployed and rapid to act are assessed.
All of these elements should be used to systematically
assess and evaluate AI-based products and solutions to
assess their authenticity and therefore effectiveness in
specific use cases.
For example, many home-loan mortgage evaluation and
recommendation systems utilize a somewhat isolated
machine learning based applicant classification method,
one of many other processes included within the solution.
The AI in this solution cannot be considered Authentic AI
to a high degree as it ‘scores’ low on the ‘Original’ and
‘Holistic’ classes as it isn’t innovative ‘enough’ (from an
AI sense). In addition, the AI component itself does not
cover on its own the end-to-end aspects of the solution
(hence affecting the overall performance and precision). It
could be considered to be ‘Pragmatic’ to some level if it
can handle the required data sources of financial
institutions or the customer applications natively, and if the
solution ‘output’ are the explicit results required as a
specific recommendation (e.g., loan conditions). However,
the deployment timeline (time-to-market) and commercial
aspects need to be evaluated as well. This is just one
example of many others, covering all kinds of variations.
Perfect backflips may grant you a gold medal if you are a
gymnast but if you are a master chess player don’t expect a
winning move.
|November 2018| 45

TOP Step Consu
ing:
StridingtowardsProfessionalServicesAutomationExcellence
Establishing and expanding a business is as
much about streamlining operations as it
is about growing revenue. Large
corporations rely on professional services
automation (PSA) to maximize the impact of their
investments in people and in systems. OpenAir
has proven to be one of the most powerful
platforms at their disposal.
11 years ago, a newly-founded company became
the first dedicated partner supporting the OpenAir
community. Today, it remains the world’s only
dedicated OpenAir consulting firm. That company
is TOP Step Consulting.
A Solid Foundation
The firm’s first employee, Ronn Breaux is today
its President and CEO. Ronn and TOP Step’s
Founder and Executive Advisor, Jodi Cicci,
started the company when OpenAir was a
stand-alone tool in 2007.
Ronn Breaux
President & CEO
Jodi Cicci
Founder & Executive Advisor
The duo provided consulting services to OpenAir
customers based on a shared knowledge of, and
familiarity with, its intricacies. Their passion for
the problems that OpenAir could solve for
professional services organizations and dedication
to their clients garnered an immensely positive
response, which meant that they had to expand
very rapidly.
Ronn and Jodi have made their own way,
eschewing the traditional C-suite mentality and
the tendencies to distance themselves from the
hands-on work. They have always been intimately
involved with every aspect of running the firm.
Having started with sales, customer support, and
recruitment, Ronn now focuses his considerable
talents and experience on administration,
operations, and customer relations. He performs
these roles in addition to his inherent
responsibilities as CEO. Jodi’s attention has
shifted to customer interactions and to ensuring
that Ronn has the information and support he
“
Wefollowasimple
andstraightforward
approachtoensure
wedelivera
superiorsolution.
“
46
|November 2018|

1
Best
Professional
Solution providers 2018
needs to be successful in his role as
President and CEO.
Just as their roles and responsibilities
have evolved over the past decade, the
company’s portfolio of services has
too. Initially, they concentrated on
resolving issues that customers had
with existing OpenAir
implementations. Today, they have a
complete lifecycle of services
including on-going support and
Release Management.
The People Factor
TOP Step has deliberately adopted a
hiring policy that is unique within their
industry.
Firstly, the company does not hire
fresh graduates and industry novices to
work with their customers. Instead, a
conscious decision has been made to
hire only highly-experienced
professionals with proven track records
of superior performance within
professional service industry.
This approach does increase human
resource costs, but Ronn views the
additional cost as an investment in
quality, and in the company. He
believes that the policy has been
instrumental to the success it enjoys
today.
“Our people are our most important
asset, and all of our hires have come
from other companies where they have
performed the roles that our customers
perform today,” explains Ronn.
“We can tell our customers, “I’ve done
your job. I understand the problems
you are experiencing and we can help
you with best practices that we have
implemented and used ourselves.” That
is an incredibly powerful asset to
have,” he says.
Another key difference is that the TOP
Step team does not work from a single
office but remotely from locations
across the United States. This
independence from the traditional
bounds of a single workplace
contributes to increased productivity,
which translates into better
comprehensive results for their clients.
“We emphasize frequent
communication through meetings and
online tools, so there is a strong sense
of cohesion within the team, regardless
of where an individual may be
physically working.”
Ronn acknowledges that their
organizational structure does not offer
employees many promotion
opportunities. However, he is
heartened by the fact that their turnover
rate is extremely low, something that
he attributes to the meaningful work
that they perform and the rewarding
outcomes they provide their customers.
Making a Mark
There is no doubt that TOP Step is
committed to helping OpenAir gain
and grow its market share. The
company is an advocator for the
platform providing education and
assistance through tips and ebooks
offered on their website and through
free webinars. Held twice a month,
these events usually last approximately
30 minutes with an average attendance
of 50 people.
These initiatives have established and
reinforced the company’s reputation
for excellence and as a thought leader
in the segment. Along the way, it has
also developed a close working
relationship with Oracle and has
extended its collaborations with
Oracle NetSuite partners.
Touching on the lessons that he has
learned, Ronn says that the most
important one is to listen to every
customer and consciously recognize
that each client is unique.
“People have a tendency to assume
that a new problem can or should be
resolved through a solution used in the
past. If you go into a situation with
preconceived ideas of how the client
should run their business, you can get
yourself into trouble.”
“We constantly try to remind ourselves
that every customer does things their
own way, that they have unique
requirements, and that we have to
make sure that we listen and deal with
them in that manner.”
Surging Ahead
While the past 11 years have been
remarkable for the lack of competition,
Ronn sees indications that the status
quo might change, “PSA is in vogue at
the moment. Several companies are
testing the waters in new areas.”
In line with Ronn’s assessment that
PSAs will see increased interest in the
near future, he is positioning the firm
to be at the center of these discussions.
However, he does not see much cause
for concern, adding, “We feel like we
have a 10 year plus head start.”
TOP Step expects to continue its
dominant position in the coming years
and is considering including license
sales to its range of offerings for the
first time in 2019. One thing that will
not change is their loyalty to Oracle
NetSuite and OpenAir.
“We understand that there is a lot of
competition in the market for different
PSA tools, but we have chosen
OpenAir as the path forward. The
outcomes we have seen and the success
of the over 350 customers we have
worked with over the past decade
reinforce our belief that this is the right
decision.”
This resolute commitment, strong
philosophy, and an extremely clientcentric
work ethic make TOP Step
Consulting the ideal choice for any
company looking for a reliable PSA
partner.
|November 2018| 47

Omnichannel Agent
and Customer
Engagement Solutions
Simplify and personalize the customer experience,
empower agents and achieve business success
with one workspace for all channel interactions,
application integrations, and CX reporting.