The 10 Most Innovative Companies in 2019

The
Most
in 2019
Future-Bots
Catching-up With The
Robotics For Better Future
From Editor’s Desk
A Sustainable Shift
VOL 4
April 2019
ISSUE 2
........................................................................................

E
Innovate to Climb
the Ladder
he contemporary world is encircled by innovations. People continuously look for new breakthroughs, new ideas, and
Tnew experiences that could smartly modify their standard of living. We have witnessed a ground breaking impact of
the evolving technologies on individuals as well as businesses such as blockchain technology creating a digital record
that verifies any transaction at a certain time and sequence, and AI enabling new ways to interact with consumers via chat
bots and artificial personal assistants.
Previously, companies had to compete within their respective localities. Now, this competition is on a global scale and this
increasing competition, due to evolution of new technologies, has brought along with it the need to inculcate innovation for
businesses. Creating a different version of things or ideas that already exists is therefore significant for businesses to evolve in
their respective segments.
As businesses are continually coming up with new and improved experiences, customer’s expectations are getting higher and
they are demanding more. Living up to those expectations becomes the utmost responsibility of organizations. However,
sustaining that innovation becomes significant for them to survive in the long run. Hence, they are getting involved in a
continual process of invention, reinvention, and discovery.
Innovation is one of the core elements of organizations which acts as a value-added feature and enables them to stay ahead of
the curve. Many companies have understood the importance of innovation and are thus, constantly reinventing themselves
and reevaluating their processes to come up with better solutions. By practicing innovation, they are also contributing to the
growth of economy. While some are improving or upgrading their existing products or services, others are replacing their
existing business model with an entirely new one. Their ultimate goal is to deliver unpredictable and enticing experiences to
their customers.

“
Innovation is the most important ingredient
for the recipe of success of an organization.
“
Hitesh Dhamani
In order to emphasize the innovative approaches of such businesses, Insights Success has enlisted “The 10 Most Innovative
Companies in 2019”, which are driving customer’s experiences by smartly incorporating the intersection of innovation and
evolving technologies and thereby, delivering novel solutions.
This edition features companies such as Anheuser-Busch InBev, the largest beer producer in the world and is amongst the
world’s biggest consumer goods companies; Evolving Solutions, a leading company which offers expertise primarily in the
areas of IT infrastructure, cloud and software solutions; Park Place Technologies, which provides a cost-effective servicefirst
alternative to post-warranty maintenance for storage, server and networking hardware; Fastenal, a company that helps
its customers shorten and simplify their supply chain so they can focus more resources on what they do best;
ComplianceQuest Inc., a highly flexible 100% cloud based EQMS built using the Salesforce platform.
Also, make sure to scroll through the articles written by our editorial team and CXO standpoints of some of the leading
industry experts to have a brief taste of the sector.
Let’s start reading!

Maestro’s Opinion 10
Develop Your Innovation Culture
For A Future-ready Organization
22 Tech Evolution
How VideoAmp Evolved the Company
Culture and Process to Increase
the Number of Engineers Employed
Expert’s Advice 38
The Missing Piece in
HR Suites
Articles
16
From Editor’s Desk
Future-Bots
A Sustainable Shift
Catching-up With The 30
Robotics For Better Future

Anheuser-Busch InBev
Serving Happiness
across the Globe
14
26
ComplianceQuest
Building Next Generation
Compliance and Quality Solutions
for Progressive Customers
Evolving Solutions
A Technological Expertise with
Exceptional Data Center Technology
28
34
Fastenal
Helping Great Companies
Simplify Their Supply Chains
Park Place Technologies
Delivering Exceptional
Maintenance Services
36

Editor-in-Chief
Pooja M. Bansal
Managing Editor
Anish Miller
Executive Editor
Hitesh Dhamani
Assistant Editors
Jenny Fernandes
Shubham Khampariya
Visualizer
David King
Art & Design Director
Amol Kamble
Associate Designer
Kushagra Gupta
Co-designer
Rahul Kavnekar
Senior Sales Manager
Passi D.
Business Development Manager
Peter Collins
Marketing Manager
John Matthew
Sales Executives
David, Kevin, Mark, Prasad
Technical Head
Jacob Smile
Business Development Executives
Steve, Joe, Alan, Vishal
Technical Specialist
Aditya
Digital Marketing Manager
Marry D'Souza
SME-SMO Executive
Prashant Chevale
Research Analyst
Patrick James
Circulation Manager
Database Management Technology Consultant
Robert Brown Stella Andrew David Stokes
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April, 2019
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Develop Your
About the Author
Natalie Turner is a Keynote
speaker and Author of the
book Yes, You Can
Innovate. Discover your
innovation strengths and
develop your creative
potential which was
selected as book of the
month in both the UK and
Singapore earlier this year.
She is the Founder and
CEO of The Entheo
Network, a global
innovation company and
has exemplary expertise in
the eld of marketing,
business strategy, and
leadership development.
Under her leadership, the
company provides a suite
of innovative products and
services to help individuals
and organizations create
new sources of value whilst
building innovation skills,
capabilities and culture.
She is also the inventor of
®
the 6 ‘I’s Innovation which
measures innovation
strengths of individuals and
teams to unlock the
innovation culture in an
organization.
www.6-i-innovation.com.
INNOVATION
CULTURE for a
FUTURE-READY
Organization
s the digital landscape continues to change at a rapid pace,
Adismantling and disrupting the way that we do business, how can
we ensure that our leadership and organisational thinking evolves
at the same rate? The CEO is ultimately responsible for the success or
failure of the company that they lead, which, in today’s world, means
ensuring an organisation can adapt to this fast rate of change. To do this,
leaders need to know how to innovate with agility and speed. This means,
on the ground during day-to-day work, that each employee has a clear
understanding of how they contribute to creating value out of new ideas
and a common language to enable them to work together. As a CEO, part
of your role is to foster a culture of innovation that can harness the often
disparate skills and mindsets required to successfully innovate. The key is
to understand that innovation is a journey, which includes spotting trends
and discontinuities and generating new ideas, through to investing and
implementing those ideas that can potentially have the most impact. The
skill is to know how to match people’s strengths to the right part.
How do employees currently react to innovation conversations?
Often, the first people to embrace innovation tend to love ideas and can
identify trends, patterns and opportunities. They are curious and fit the
classic stereotype of creativity – playful, open-minded and attracted to
10 April 2019|

Maestro’s Opinion
Natalie Turner
Founder & CEO
April 2019|
11

novelty. Innovation, truly deep and sustainable innovation,
combines both creativity and discipline, which are curious
bedfellows. It is a considered process that requires a raft of
different skills and ways of thinking, combined towards
creating a common outcome. In fact, the innovation journey
is more like a cycle that can start at any point, not just in the
playful and curious spaces.
There are probably many employees in your organisation
who do not identify with this sense of curiosity, or think
that they have light bulb moments, but who are nonetheless
crucial to the success of innovation as an outcome. You will
not embed an agile innovation culture without showing
employees of all stripes and skillsets where they fit in. The
innovation culture needs a common framework and
language. Within this shared understanding, different styles
are more likely to interact with, and appreciate, the
contribution of others. Creating the best environment for
each stage of the journey, so that people are empowered to
contribute their strengths will improve the likelihood of
success.
Understanding the innovation journey
Start with aligning teams around PURPOSE, what are they
trying to achieve and why? Then move to how they can
identify opportunities through understanding trends and
patterns, often related to changes in human behaviour. Then
move to the creative space where people ignite ideas,
through practices such as brainstorming and value
proposition design. After you have an array of ideas, submit
them to analysis and experimentation, separating the good
ones from the bad, investigating whether they are useful,
not just novel. The interrelationship between these three
spaces is often where you see design thinking processes in
action. Now, if you have a few really good ideas that have a
high chance of working, start to think through how to best
make them work. If not, revisit the original-identified
opportunity or generate alternative ideas and solutions.
When ready for investment, innovation leadership is really
critical. This is often the graveyard of ideas. Here
demonstrate courage; assign resources, whether it is people,
time or money. Once ideas are funded, find people who are
great at implementation and getting things done. Once the
idea is starting to get traction and have an impact, harness
the skills of improvement and optimisation to scale and
leverage the ideas into other areas of opportunity.
There are no straight roads. This is why innovating is often
so difficult. Not only are you trying to do something new,
you have to harness diversity towards an often unknown
outcome. Creating the best environment for each stage of
the journey, so that people are empowered to contribute
their strengths, will help to create a successful outcome.
This means teaching people when to contribute and when to
pass the baton on to someone else. This is true
collaboration, anchored in a clear purpose that is focused on
the success of the idea.
Give each of your employees a proactive role in the
innovation journey
Culture could be termed “how we do things around here”
and part of what contributes towards this is how leaders act
and behave towards the people that they manage and lead.
Even more so when it comes to innovating. If people
understand their contribution, they will have the confidence
and courage to start thinking of themselves as innovators.
They will also understand when they will have the most
impact. The innovation journey needs a different culture at
different points; a culture that allows for ideas to be
generated is not the same as one needed to investigate those
ideas.
Innovation and the CEO
Lead by example. Understand the part of the innovation
journey that you are best at, and be aware of the bias that
you will have because of that. Increase the awareness of
yourself and others,so that you can empower everyone to
cultivate environments that allow their strengths to flourish.
Ensure that every skillset and its contribution to innovation
is respected and rewarded. This can only be done by
understanding the whole of the innovation journey, end-toend.
Diversity is key, if you have a lot of people who are
good at generating ideas, you may end up with very little
that actually gets done. If you have a lot of people who are
good at implementation, you may end up dealing with
today’s work very well, but not have the culture of a
future-ready organisation that can adapt to fast-paced
change tomorrow. In empowering your leaders and
employees to develop their creative potential, in the
broadest sense of the word, innovation will start to seep
through the whole of your organisation, embedding a
culture that will increase the likelihood of you creating
impactful value out of new ideas.
12 April 2019|

The
Most
in 2019
Anheuser-Busch InBev
Serving Happiness across the Globe
Certainly, when we gather to celebrate the happiest
moments of life, we count on various forms of
liquors and alcoholic beverages to raise a toast.
Amongst those alcoholic beverages, beer is considered as
the communal one, as it is a drink of moderation. A cold
pint of beer becomes the adaptable option when it comes to
drinking at social events. Every moment of life should be
celebrated with beer, believes Anheuser-Busch InBev, a
multinational drink and brewing holdings company.
Anheuser-Busch InBev is building a company to last,
brewing beer, and building brands that will continue to
bring people together for the next 100 years and beyond.
In an interview with Insights Success, Michael Codd, the
Marketing and Innovation Lead, of Anheuser-Busch
InBev of its European operations, shares his key insights on
how the company is leveraging new technologies to better
engage with its consumers, partners, customers, colleagues,
and beer lovers around the world.
Below are the highlights of an interview:
Give a brief overview of the company, its vision.
We are the largest beer producer in the world and amongst
the world’s biggest consumer goods companies. We live by
the motto “Bringing people together, for a better world.”
You can break this down in its two components. We see
beer as the heart and soul of social gatherings; it features in
some of the best moments in history and in people’s lives.
We want socializing with beer to be the catalyst for a
more connected, happier and peaceful world. The better
world part is hugely important as well. We have
committed publicly to very ambitious goals around clean
energy and our brands try to do well for the world, like
Stella partnering with water.org, Corona helping to clean
up our beaches or Leffe supporting local monasteries.
What inspired Anheuser-Busch InBev to enter into its
respective segment?
Well we are amongst the oldest companies to work in this
segment. But the beer industry is a really exciting place to
be. It plays a meaningful role in people’s lives and is less
turbulent than many other products. In good times, people
celebrate by having a beer; in bad times they will still
enjoy to have a good quality brew.
What are the cutting-edge products/services offered by
Anheuser-Busch InBev?
We are constantly trying to innovative and reinvent the
way we do business across all functions. In the brewing
process, we have found innovative ways to save up to
20% energy consumption, in supply we have highgates
optimizing warehouse space, on the road we are a huge
investor in electric trucks and testing blockchain. For our
customers we try to provide an Amazon-like web portal
service and for the consumer we are developing mixed
reality solutions and digitally printed bottles.
14
April 2019|

“
We have a portfolio of alcoholic
and non-alcohol beers that
sell all across the world with a
big local focus.
—Michael Codd
Marketing and Innovation Lead
What strategies has Anheuser-
Busch InBev undertaken to stay
ahead of the competition?
In many countries in the West, the
beer industry has been flat for several
years now. As such, we have been
segmenting the market to see which
segment have strong growth and
really shifting our focus towards that.
As a result, we have a strong focus
on premium and non-alcoholic
beverages, to name two.
Describe the experiences,
achievements or lessons learnt that
has shaped the journey of the
company.
We have historically done very well
with our organic growth but we have
also achieved a portion of our growth
through M&A. We have learned that
it’s advantageous to be able to enter
new markets or gain new brands, but
that is not the most important thing.
April 2019|
The most important thing we inherit
with joining forces is the people that
come with it. New colleagues have
brought fresh ideas, different
perspective and healthy debates
about how to continue improving.
Where does Anheuser-Busch InBev
sees itself in the long run and what
are its future goals?
We want to continue performing well
and being a responsible corporate
citizen. Only by doing good for the
world will you survive to live the
next 100+ years and we would to
make our contribution to a better
world.
About the Leader
Michael Codd is leading the
innovative projects of Anheuser-
Busch InBev of its European
operations. Meanwhile, he also helps
some technology start-ups in
Belgium and UK. He is responsible
for the IT strategy for Marketing in
Zone Europe and is working on some
innovation projects that will help
transform his company into the
digital age and contribute to its
exponential growth.
Prior to Anheuser-Busch InBev,
Michael has spent his career in
getting a better understanding of
large corporations in consumer goods
during his time as a consultant. At
the same time, he was also working
together with some startups with a
focus on their sales and marketing.
15

16 April 2019|

From Editor’s Desk
A
Sustainable
Shift
Industries in their true essence are the systems driven
by technical excellence and customer satisfaction.
These two variables are the vital ingredients for any
organisation to thrive in this competitive domain.
Unfortunately, not all the time these dimensions prove to
be absolutely fruitful. Contingencies do strike! The
Automotive sector is no exception to that.
One such history-defining challenge in the form emission
norms had entered into the market back in 90s and its
latest version has caused automotive industry to disrupt.
Constantly rising air pollution made lawmakers to
establish few amendments for restoring the nature's
balance. These amendments or regulations impose
constraints in front of the firms making them to upgrade
and update their tools.
To survive and succeed, automakers need to revise
policies and strategies on different fronts including
technology, infrastructure, recapitalization and
April 2019|
marketing. This difficult balancing act where they have
to enhance their expertise on the account of billions of
dollars to be invested, and minimising the pass-on effect
to customers, has sparked vigorous discussions in recent
times.
An industry which has evolved astonishingly with
passing time will evidently respond to this universal call
towards Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Euro
Standards, the first and foremost emission regulation
ever formulated in the wake of astronomically growing
pollution across the globe, were initiated in 1991. On its
basis, California Air Resource Board (CARB), a primary
institute which governs all emission related rules in US
was made. CARB which works in tandem with
Environmental Protection Agency (EPAs) is known for
its stringent regulations which are adopted by most states
in the country.
Ultimately, the issue which remains is how are the
current automotive companies going to amend
17

themselves to match these norms and appeal customers
without tightening their budget at the same time? Thus,
they are analysing keyways to adopting these strict
emission norms and not losing their beloved customers
as well.
1.Technological Innovations
In the history of automobile, many revolutionary
changes have been made. Be it the discovery of Spark
Ignition or Compression Ignition engines, or the
development of Electronic Traction Control system
which employed a smooth integration of machine
intelligence into mechanical power.
In this need of the hour, technical perfection has to stand
up once again if automotive industries have to retain
their title of change-makers. Thanks to many bright
engineering minds, such ideas are kept surfacing which
will help to reduce emissions from automobiles and
simultaneously enhance fuel efficiency too. Higher
mileage eventually helps to achieve lesser vehicular
emissions.
Mechanisms like Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR),
Three Way Catalytic converter (TWC), Selective
Catalytic Reduction (SCR), Gasoline Direct Injection
(GDI), Variable Valve Train (VVT), Continuous Variable
Transmission (CVT), Turbochargers, Diesel Particulate
Filter (DPF), On-Board Diagnostics with oxygen sensors
and transmission-systems-provided-with-many gears can
help to trap and reduce Nitrous oxides (NOx),
Hydrocarbons(HC), carbon monoxide(CO) and
particulate matter (PM). Additionally they have proved
their prowess in enhancing mileage, realizing the dream
of highly fuel efficient futuristic vehicles with zero or
least emissions.
One more important aspect of these add-on systems is
that they operate with a prerequisite condition of high
graded fuel. Fuel quality of present days can hinder the
flawless working of above mentioned equipment. Fuel
with any amount of sulphur greater than 10 parts-permillion
is considered ill-suited for the current
infrastructure. Therefore, fuel refineries have to upgrade
their machinery to achieve the desired quality. Good
news is that Oil Marketing Companies have already gear
up the process to upgrade their refinery infrastructure.
2. Down-weighting is the key!
Many organisations employ a method where they opt for
unconventional size accompanied with lightweight
structure to fit in the regulations. For instance, instead of
hunk sized SUVs, companies nowadays launch many
SUVs having smaller sizes and much lighter in weight.
This can give them advantage in two ways. Firstly, with
less intrinsic load to propel, vehicles achieve better
mileage which is the most appealing factor for many of
the buyers. Second thing is, production costs associated
with shrunk size vehicles are proportionally smaller,
further shrinking the actual cost a consumer has to bear.
Needless to say, reduction in size and weight together is
merely a dream without materials having desired
properties. Fortunately modern material science has
blessed us with materials like Carbon fiber, Aluminium
Alloy, Magnesium Alloy, Hybrid material and Polymer
Composites which not only flaunt their lightweight
characteristics but also their durability and wear
resistance.
3. Green fuel powered vehicles
Automobile fraternity is facing a paramount shift in
terms of propelling power as newer, cleaner and cheaper
alternatives are being introduced. From its introduction
th
of SI and CI engines in late 19 century, they are a
popular choice among mass and technocrats. But their
environmental demerits are slowly pushing them towards
extinction. Solar vehicles, electric vehicles, hybrid
vehicles and gas powered vehicles can be the solutions
for growing environmental pollution and depleting crude
oil sources. As a wise has man said, “change is the only
permanent thing in this world”, automakers have no
choice than embracing these changes despite of their
higher initial cost. However, the advantages it offers are
countless and unquestionable.
4. Unorthodox Designs
Until now people have used automobiles for
connectivity, comfort and the means of carrying goods.
Time has come to rethink over our expectations from
them since we are employing vehicle designs which
serve purposes commonly. An example where a vehicle
18 April 2019|

widely used for intra-city connectivity is also equipped
with larger trunk spaces which could have been avoided
helping in reduction of overall weight and size.
Dedicated category of vehicles for dedicated purposes
employing unique shapes seems a distant dream for now
but certainly not impossible.
5. Spread the word!
Customers tend to have a problem in paying extra cash
unless they know the long-term benefits and payback
time of these accessories. A study shows that a EURO VI
norm car which costs about $1000 more than its EURO
V counterparts retrieves the investment within 2-3 years
for enhanced fuel efficiency.
Protecting our mother Earth from harmful effects of
pollution is a responsibility of every single individual to
assure a healthier and greener environment to our future
generations. Despite of initial investments which these
amendments demand, they are essential for the very
existence of this planet. An intensive marketing strategy
about making people aware of the benefits received at
the core can instil an appreciation of value over cost.
This can make the job easier for manufacturers.
6. Credit System: A tool for rectification
Credit system is a depository system where if an
automaker exceeds standards in early years, it can bank
credits to use in future years with stringer standards. An
interesting statistics revealed that last year, many
automobile giants like Mercedes Benz, Honda could not
mitigate the emissions to the level drafted by regulatory
agencies. However, thanks to their previous years' credit
points, they could manage to surpass the benchmark.
7. Lower profits with higher number of customers
A prime hurdle while employing these technical
modifications is that their cost is undoubtedly reflected in
increased vehicle prices. This can discourage people
from purchasing new automobiles resulting overall
slowdown of the industry. After all, people pay vehicle
producers for horsepower and not for environmental
protection.
That being said, we should also face the reality check
where bearing the whole cost isn't possible for any
organisation. So, passing it on to the customers is the
only way manufacturers have. But a chunk of those costs
can be swallowed by lowering the profit margins. This
strategy can make businesses survive without losing their
customers.
Undoubtedly, emission regulations are the need of the
hour with millions of vehicles rolling out in the market
worsening the pollution issue globally. Conforming to
them is of prime importance when considering the noble
virtues of the efforts making this planet a better place to
live. But succeeding and surviving in this transiently
modifying world of connectivity, automobile industry
has to adopt some changes and strategies. An industry
with a history of marvellous inventions and a potential to
shape the future will surely be on the driving seat while
experiencing this sustainable awakening.
Some experts even call this credit score mechanism a
daunting loophole which is compromising the serious
efforts of environmental protection. However, while
tightening the grip on vehicle pollutants, stricter
emission standards like EURO VI, CARB and BS VI had
to provide a breathing space for organisations.
Entrepreneurs can exploit this situation to some extent in
case they fall marginally short of meeting the norms.
April 2019|
19

22 April 2019|

Tech Evolution
VideoAmp turns 4 years old this month. So many
memories, and so much growth. Let’s reflect on
some of the worst decisions and associated
learnings that have been fundamental to our growth. Why
the worst you say? Because when you accelerate your
learning rate in a fail-fast environment, it then allows you to
make fast decisions vs. the analysis paralysis predicament.
Ref lection
One of my favorite wildcard interview questions for
managers is: “Describe the failure you’re most proud of.”
This sometimes catches people off guard, so I’ll share mine
first to get the conversation going. Inevitably it comes down
to choosing because there are so many.
You can’t talk about growth and success without talking
about these failures. Unless you’re some kind of hybrid AIrobot-space-alien
who’s absolutely perfect, there’s going to
be mistakes. What’s important is that as a leader you own
your mistakes and be transparent about them.
Hiring
Finding the right people is the single most important aspect
of growing a startup. The biggest mistakes in hiring have
been:
Ÿ
Ÿ
“Promoting out of hand” is another variation of
this where you don’t put someone through the
normal due diligence because they already
present. In our case, individual contributor (IC)
engineers don’t go through the rigorous
reference checks that new managers do.
“Hiring under duress”, or lowering your bar
simply to meet headcount goals. I strongly
advise to hire fewer “full-full stack” senior
engineers vs. a bunch of junior or mid-level
career developers who require more time,
nurturing and precious attention units from your
senior staff.
Process
This is a moving target, and one which has definitely been
an ongoing series of blogs. In the early stage, we “over
prescribed scrum.” Something that a very early stage
company can do, along with too much agile processes too
soon.
For example, prototypes and proof of concepts should not
have a rigorous definition of done, with endless unit,
functional, and end-to-end tests because the product’s
requirements will probably zig-zag wildly.
Ÿ
“Hiring out of hand”, or short cutting the normal
processes because the candidate is well known by other
engineers in the group.
April 2019|
Conversely, having too little process when you are
supporting enterprise customers can also be a
problem. I spent my prior days as an IC and
23

contractor retrofitting and scaling CI/CD pipelines and
training engineers how to write better tests.
The challenge is right-sizing this all along the way, and the
trigger points on when to change may not be obvious. I say
this because we grew headcount by 22 engineers from Oct
2017 to Feb 2018, and in the process we did not modify our
simplified Kanban approach to a prescribed Scrum process
quickly enough. Growing pains emerged, to say the least.
Now we’re in a spot where we can withstand a magnitude
scale of growth with roughly the same squad and tribe-level
process.
Management
Riffing off rapid growth of Brains in engineering, we didn’t
scale management fast enough. Almost all startup
engineering orgs start very flat, with all ICs and no
management. You have “tech leads” who may split their
time doing light managerial functions, but they all write
code and dive into the operations.
The biggest fail here in scaling the ICs was not scaling the
org and management structure to follow. At ~44 engineers
and data scientists, we have a duty to deliver on our mission
to provide an environment where they have the opportunity
to do the best work of their lives and be worth more in the
marketplace.
Without this vital management structure, there is a vacuum.
Do not bolt this on later, build it as you go. We took
inspiration from Spotify’s model of engineering
organizational scaling.
Growth & Career Pathing
We’ve talked about all of these fails, how about something
that has worked well for us?
When doing initial contact with a candidate, I often ask
“why are you in market?” I have seen countless folks who
are looking because their current management does not
have their growth and career pathing in mind. In extreme
cases, they can do a day’s work in four hours, feel like they
are under-challenged, and have not learned anything in
years. They work in an environment like the movie Office
Space.
Taking an opposite approach is to engage in the growth and
pathing of every individual. We do this by:
Ÿ
Ÿ
Ÿ
aligning the growth of the individual with the
company’s growth.
having management check in frequently on the success
of this, and
setting up formal quarterly check-ins on measuring
these goals. Google adopted this early on from John
Doerr in the form of OKRs, and there are great
platforms out there which can formally measure and
track these objectives.
Career pathing is a longer-term concern. I ask candidates
from the start “so what’s the next job after VideoAmp?”
This often catches them off guard, then after careful thought
most reply with a role 1-2 levels beyond where they’re at
now. It’s our goal to help steer them in whatever path they
currently see.
Many earlier-career engineers think management is their
ultimate path, but I have found that many will stay on a
tract of engineering excellence. Whether it’s a Principal
Engineer or a VP of Engineering, the goal is to orient the
new challenges in a manner which grows them in that
direction, even if we can’t fully realize their ultimate
pathing goal while at the company.
By paying careful attention to these details, we have found
our annual retention rate in the high 90%.
24 April 2019|

The
Most
in 2019
ComplianceQuest
Building Next Generation Compliance and
Quality Solutions for Progressive Customers
Today, with the rapid growth in business, many
manufacturing firms are looking beyond the adage of
employing traditional, on-premise, legacy software
that give no visibility in core areas like supply chain, quality
and compliance. Besides, with the rising customer demands
and business expectations, manufacturing companies cannot
risk having infrastructure and data disruptions causing supply
chain failures. Founded in 2013, ComplianceQuest reenergizes
the industry with a modern approach to the
traditional EQMS solution. ComplianceQuest offers an
Enterprise Quality Management System that is built and run
on the modern cloud Salesforce® platform to aid
manufacturing companies to redefine quality and compliance
facets of supply chain operations. The company offers
unmatched compliance and other benefits with remarkable
efficiency. Hence, to have a brief idea about the platform and
its vision Insights Success conducted a worth read interview
with the ComplianceQuest’s CTO and EVP of Software
Engineering, Atulya Risal.
Below are the highlights of the interview between Insights
Success and Atulya Risal:
Give a brief overview of ComplianceQuest, its uniqueness
and its vision.
ComplianceQuest provides a unified suite of applications in a
single platform addressing quality management,
manufacturing quality, supplier management, customer/field
service quality and health & safety. Delivering best-in-class
out-of-the-box solutions, ComplianceQuest fast-tracks an
organization’s efficiency, safety and overall performance by
combining enterprise quality and compliance with modern
collaboration, communication and social media across the
product value chain. Suitable for emerging growth companies
and scalable and flexible to meet the needs of medium and
global enterprises, ComplianceQuest is easy to implement,
validate and use.
ComplianceQuest supports 12 core best practices driven
solutions/processes out-of-the-box, integrated and ready to go.
Unlike recently introduced cloud solutions, ComplianceQuest,
not only has a comprehensive breadth and depth of integrated
solutions today but it’s also designed to scale to support the
needs of small to global enterprises alike by redefining what a
next generate EQMS platform and solution should be.
Because ComplianceQuest is natively built on Salesforce, it
leverages all the 100% modern cloud infrastructure and all
the platform benefits including security, availability,
reliability, and performance at scale.
ComplianceQuest can integrate its solution suite with
traditional enterprise software solutions including ERP,
MES, CRM and HR systems expanding its performance
strength of quality and compliance aspects across the entire
supply chain. In addition, ComplianceQuest has abilities
through Salesforce for communication and collaboration
through Chatter, social media like and follow, Community
Cloud to include exchange of data/documents from a
company’s external partners, support for mobility, artificial
intelligence through Einstein Analytics and already comes
with pre-validated solutions for Life Sciences customers.
Kindly brief us about your ABCD implementation
methodology for small to medium businesses?
With decades of proven expertise working with small to
medium businesses, we clearly understand the unique and
challenging aspects of operating in a small and mediumsized,
growing business as well as enterprises.
ComplianceQuest provides you with a knowledgeable
solution engineer who actively works with your company’s
key contacts to create a unique, highly tailored
implementation plan to guarantee success. Whether you are
budget conscious or simply wish to take control of the
application, our Agile approach to implementation is about
knowledge transfer while the systems are being
implemented at a fast, but planned pace.
Agile Based ComplianceQuest Deployment (ABCD) can
work two ways:
1. For SMB- provide for best practice guidance, based on
our out-of-the-box workflows. We know how to implement
world class QMS workflows that optimize your processes
and provide for an opportunity to realize the productivity
gains that you seek while embarking on this important
journey for your organization.
26 April 2019|

“
We streamline quality, compliance,
content and collaboration
management workflows using the
world’s most proven enterprise cloud
platform from Salesforce.
—Atulya Risal
CTO & EVP of Software Engineering
2. Enterprise customers- provide for
a highly tailored implementation plan
with the goal of establishing a center of
excellence that will own business
processes and the systems to support
the process.
Where does ComplianceQuest see
itself in the long run and what are its
future goals?
ComplianceQuest’s journey is steadfast
in its belief of Salesforce platform and
ecosystem as a strong foundation for
continuing to develop and deliver
future innovative solutions and seeing
rapid growth globally. Salesforce itself
is also becoming a more standard
platform within many companies and
hence IT is looking at other Salesforce
apps available to extend the value of
their investment and reduce overall IT
footprint. This modern cloud
experience means a reduction in
management of modular licenses and
versions and simplifies IT issues
surrounding software management.
Using the cloud, customers will always
have the most updated version of the
software platform. In addition, since
the business application platform is
continuously innovated and managed
by Salesforce, it allows
ComplianceQuest to drive more
innovation into its own solutions.
Because of the ease of development,
ComplianceQuest can quickly create
fully working prototypes, new features
or customer specific capabilities to
address new market or customer
requirements and turn them into final
production solutions.
With continued passion and dedication
on this journey, ComplianceQuest is
April 2019|
well on its way to become a market
and competitive disruption.
Testimonials Proving Excellence
“Our experience with implementing
Compliance Quest @ Flipkart has
been nothing short of a wonder. As the
company project lead, I have had the
privilege and hands on experience in
Designing the System Architecture,
Configure and Deploy it across the
organization and the entire experience
has been nothing short of GREAT…
While wearing the hat of System
Admin, the most significant feature that
I have experienced is the platform’s
capability to design,
configure/customize and deploy any
workflow / module from the front end
itself i.e. NO CODING REQUIRED at
all.
Why ComplianceQuest?
Ÿ
Ÿ
Ÿ
Ÿ
Ÿ
Ÿ
Ÿ
Fastest growing native Salesforce
based EQMS solution
Worry-free infrastructure
platform - available anywhere,
anytime
Reliable, versatile and scalable
for all size companies
Single platform built by quality
and compliance experts
Flexible and tailorable to meet
customer and industry
requirements
Built-in best practices and
seamless processes with
Salesforce and AppExchange
solutions
Rapid time to value by quickly
getting up and running in weeks
Priced reasonably and delivering
incredible value for money!
The tool is so simple to use that we
hardly reached out to CQ Support for
any subsequent customizations and all
Enhancements / Add-On’s were
implemented In-House and enabled us
to de-skill the System Admin role and
assign it to people with good command
on spreadsheet applications like MS
Excel.
A true asset for the organization! 3
Cheers for team Compliance Quest”. -
Satish Venkataraman, Manager
Quality, Flipkart
“If you need an entire QMS in a
Centralized Cloud-Based, 100%
Salesforce Supported Platform, then go
for COMPLIANCE QUEST (CQ), you
will be rest assured that YOU MADE
THE RIGHT DECISION FOR LIFE!”
-Ron Shah, Director of Quality
Assurance, Ocean Optics
About the Leader
As Chief Technology Officer and EVP
of Software Engineering, Atulya Risal
oversees ComplianceQuest’s
technology and product innovation,
software engineering, quality, product
documentation, technical support and
off-shore operations.
27

The
Most
in 2019
Evolving Solutions
A Technological Expertise with
Exceptional Data Center Technology
Technology has become the core aspect of every
business. In today’s busy corporate environment,
organizations need to continue to operate their
systems, while freeing up time and resources to invest in
transformative technologies. To do this effectively,
organizations need to prioritize time and budgets, but also
depend on trusted partners to advise them through the process.
Taking this need into consideration, Evolving Solutions has
invested in its core to provide deep technological expertise and
full-service technology solutions to organizations with its
exceptional infrastructure, cloud and services solutions.
Technology is now at the heart of every business and making
sure that its clients get the right technology from the right
provider is exactly what Evolving Solutions helps achieve.
Co-founded by Jaime Gmach, who continues to lead the
company as its President and CEO, Evolving Solutions has
emerged as a leading technology solution provider to
businesses throughout North America. The company does this
by focusing on developing long-term relationships and
building trust with their clients. The key to its purpose is
helping clients simplify technology, while delivering on
Evolving Solutions’ core values: do the right thing, be a team
player, and be humbly confident.
A Technical Strategist and Advisor
The technical strategies and directions of Evolving Solutions
are led by Michael Downs, the company’s Chief Technology
Officer. He brings over 18 years of experience creating
architectures to solve complex business problems including
big data, high performance computing, integration, automation
and end user computing. His broad technology, business and
industry experience provides valuable perspective to the
company and its clients working to implement innovative
technologies to support their success. Downs believes that
innovation comes from exploring a wide variety of
disciplines and industries. One may find that a great way to
develop a solution may come from listening to great music
or going on a bike ride, as often as reading an industry
whitepaper.
Serving the Technical Aspects of Industry
The need for businesses to adapt quickly to new and
emerging competitors resulted in a new approach to
application development designed to more easily try new
concepts and offerings. That new application architecture in
turn spawned innovative change in the infrastructure to
support those applications. For Evolving Solutions,
supporting clients with the enterprise discipline they need,
while delivering more agile infrastructure provided by
cloud-like solutions is a key challenge today.
Organizations struggle to effectively integrate the two ends
of the spectrum without disrupting business and increasing
the value they offer to their clients. New applications and
platforms demand a complete change in methodology and
culture to become more agile within IT departments. These
types of changes can be a big struggle for managing IT as
the digital transformation takes a more prominent place as a
competitive advantage for businesses.
Downs and the entire Evolving Solutions team believes
clients must continue to optimize their existing technology
while providing the capabilities their businesses need to
innovate. Selecting the proper platform for workloads and
determining which applications to update, rewrite or replace
represent the core challenge faced today. Accomplishing this
balance requires clients to transition to delivering “IT as a
Service”. How foundational, transformational and new
workloads are delivered is a unique challenge for each
28 April 2019|

“
At Evolving Solutions, we will
continue to ensure a job done right
every time, as we transition to enable
the most impactful technologies
the market has to offer.
—Michael Downs
Chief Technology Officer
client, requiring each one to assemble
the best combination of internal and
external capabilities to meet their
goals. That approach must also be
flexible enough to adapt to major
business and technology changes that
are a constant part of enterprise IT.
An Incremental Approach
Evolving Solutions created a process
design to help itself with the rapid
assessment of offering and solution
opportunities to assist its clients. The
company calls it BEA, or Business
Enablement Approach. The process has
already allowed it to launch new
offerings in Automation, Orchestration
and DevOps. Although it knew that
there was significant interest in this
solution space, it needed to validate the
market opportunity in its geography
and determine the specific focus of
offerings. Thus, it went through a
series of short “experiments” to prove
or disprove its ideas. As a result, the
approach worked well, but it
challenged the company to balance its
reputation for white glove service and
flawless execution along with
presenting new offerings to its clients.
This incremental approach helped
Evolving Solutions strike the balance
while learning, the vital aspect to be
known.
Building Enduring Client
Relationships
Evolving Solutions does not just go for
a sale; instead, it works hard to develop
a long-term partnership with its clients.
All employees focus on building
enduring relationships and ensuring a
successful solution implementation.
Rather than just finishing a job and
moving on, the company measures its
success on the length of its client
relationships. The company always
sticks to its commitment of delivering
quality services. It tends to turn down
projects, if it knows it is unable to
deliver the quality service and
experience that its clients have come to
expect.
Sculpting a Fully-Functional
Environment
Downs leads the technology efforts to
develop new solutions and offerings as
Evolving Solutions continues the
momentum the company has built for
the past 24 years. The company is
highly accomplished at architecting,
configuring, and installing traditional
data center technologies. Throughout
2019 and the coming years, the
company is striving to expand its
partnerships and strengths into more
flexible and agile solutions like
software-defined, open source
platforms, and cloud-native
applications. Its architects always have
and will continue to construct a fullyfunctional
environment and strategy
that fits into the needs and
requirements defined by its clients.
To know more, visit
www.evolvingsol.com
April 2019|
29

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
30 April 2019|

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
April 2019|
31

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-aservice
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
32 April 2019|

The
Most
in 2019
Fastenal
Helping Great Companies Simplify Their Supply Chains
Back in the 1950s, when he was a kid working in his
dad’s auto supply shop, a young budding entrepreneur
named Bob Kierlin noticed that the fasteners came in
little boxes that were about the same size as a pack of
cigarettes. He figured if cigarettes can be vended, why not
fasteners?
The idea stuck with him and eventually became the venture
vision for Fastenal, until it became apparent that the machine
design wouldn’t support the sizes and volumes of fasteners
required by potential customers. Out of necessity, the decision
was made to pivot to a branch-based service model with a
focus on outside sales and, later, inventory management – a
simple concept that, as it turned out, met a widespread market
demand.
Over the ensuing 50-plus years, Fastenal has evolved into an
increasingly strategic solutions provider that helps businesses
shorten and simplify their supply chain for a broad range of
industrial and construction products. Through leveraged
purchasing and efficient inventory management, the company
helps its clients shift finite resources (money, time, and
energy) to focus on what they do, not the products they need
to do it.
Automating and Digitizing the Supply Chain
Today Fastenal offers a suite of automated supply technology
to provide solutions for specific customer objectives, whether
that’s to track assets throughout the facility, to automate the
inventory ordering process for loose consumables, or to tie
product consumption to specific employees or profiles (e.g.,
departments, projects, job codes, etc.).
Fastenal’s supply chain activities produce a spectrum of data –
product info, locations, levels, users, pricing, frequency –
which the company mines to give customers unique insights
into their business. For example, with Fastenal’s FAST 360°
tool, customers can view not only how much inventory they
have on hand, but also exactly where that product resides in
their facility, down to the specific bin stock or vending
location.
Meanwhile, Fastenal’s new FAST 360° Analytics reporting
portal aggregates and presents data in ways that inform
purchasing decisions and strategies for cost savings
opportunities – predictive and prescriptive analytics to guide
future improvements.
Leading the Charge for Change
Bill Drazkowski is Fastenal’s Executive Vice President,
National Accounts. He leads a team of roughly 220 sales
professionals and subject matter experts focused on growing
and serving Fastenal’s national account customer base,
which today represents a little over half of the company’s
total business. He and his team consult with large multi-site
companies to introduce and optimize supply chain solutions
that drive their corporate goals across multiple locations,
balancing national/global consistency with flexible local
service. He has played a vital role in making national
accounts one of Fastenal’s most powerful growth drivers,
and, as a solutions provider for some of the world's most
successful companies, in bringing supply chain innovation
to the industrial marketplace.
Great People, Close to the Customer
One thing Fastenal figured out very early on is how to
operate local businesses cost-effectively. Another (related)
structural advantage is its “hub and spoke” distribution
system and captive transportation fleet, an outgrowth of the
organization’s roots as a fastener distributor. The
combination – local service backed by last-mile distribution
– enables it to provide an extremely short, efficient supply
chain for the customer.
34 April 2019|

“
We align with our
customers to make
them more successful.
—Bill Drazkowski
Executive Vice President
– National Accounts
Another longstanding strategy has been
to invest aggressively in employee
training through their corporate
university, the Fastenal School of
Business (FSB). Last year Fastenal
employees on average received 16
hours of training from FSB, and
overall there were more than 430,000
FSB course completions. This
commitment to bringing out the
potential of everybody in the
organization is absolutely central to the
organization’s success.
Fastenal’s major growth drivers,
including national accounts, vending,
e-business, international expansion,
construction, and its onsite service
model, are all predicated on these
foundational elements – a local
presence at 3,000-plus in-market
servicing locations, a captive
distribution/logistics infrastructure, and
above all, Fastenal’s talented people.
Empowering People to Innovate
Fastenal’s founder Bob Kierlin
fostered a culture of decentralized
decision-making and bottom-up
innovation. His basic philosophy is that
organizations succeed to the extent that
they:
April 2019|
Ÿ
Ÿ
Keep everyone within the
organization focused on a common
goal.
Bring out and use the creativity of
all their members.
Fastenal has been a proving ground for
those beliefs. As the company has
discovered, giving people the freedom
to make local decisions can create
some bumps in the road, but it
unleashes incredible agility and
dynamism. That’s really been the story
of Fastenal – a company that’s gone
from very humble beginnings to
become a fast-growing $5-billion
global organization. It’s not the
products Fastenal provides. It’s not
even how they distribute them. It’s that
they’ve done a good job of not placing
limits on people.
Client Feedback
“Being able to manage our supply
chain in partnership with Fastenal has
really enabled us to deliver quality at
every single point along the job. It
takes one more variable out of the
equation.”-Adam Rhode, Vice
President - Director, Operational
Excellence and Engineering, Sellen
Construction
“The services Fastenal provides allow
us to reallocate our personnel so that
we’re not focusing on the MRO
[maintenance, repair, and operations]
side – the shop supplies and the things
that are not our core competency. They
allow us to optimize all those resources
so that we’re focusing on the things
that make us money: getting parts out
to our customers on time.”-Billie
McMillian, Program Manager,
Triumph Group, Hot Springs, AR
“I would estimate our Fastenal
vending solution increased production
within the first month by 10 to 15
percent, driving our ultimate goal here,
which is to get quality product out the
door as fast as possible.”-Mike
Mason, Purchasing Manager,
Sundowner Trailers
35

The
Most
in 2019
Park Place Technologies
Delivering Exceptional Maintenance Services
In this digital world, most work equipment relies on
framed architecture with stable storage, server and
networking hardware. Understanding the complexity and
evolving nature of this model, Park Place Technologies
(LLC) stepped into the market to help companies realize their
business goals through more effective use of technology.
Since 1991, Park Place Technologies has provided an
alternative to post-warranty storage, server and networking
hardware maintenance for IT data centers. As the world’s
largest pure play post-warranty data center maintenance
organization, the company supports more than 15,200
organizations in over 141 countries. Headquartered in
Cleveland, Ohio, Park Place currently employs nearly 1,200
people, and maintains offices across the globe, including in
San Diego, Denver, Boston, Toronto, London, Wiesbaden and
Singapore.
Shaping the Future
Taking Artificial Intelligence, digital transformation, and
cybersecurity into consideration, Park Place is shaping its
future in order to serve value added services to its customers.
As Artificial Intelligence continues to expand in adoption, its
benefits are now being recognized at the enterprise level.
According to a recent report titled Artificial Intelligence: The
Next Digital Frontier, out of 3,000 C-level executives, only
20% of respondents had adopted AI at scale in a core part of
their business. This is an area where Park Place sees
tremendous growth opportunity, specifically when it comes to
service and support.
According to Park Place, as companies innovate, there needs
to be a conscious effort to efficiently allocate budget. Third
party maintenance services can go a long way in freeing up
mindshare and budget for IT programs looking to shift
resources towards the future. Secondly, servers that are
running software application designed to detect and act on
cyber-attacks play a very important role in cybersecurity.
From the company’s standpoint, supporting hardware and
ensuring that server hardware is available to run securitybased
applications is the key for the security of its
customers.
Proactive, Predictive, and Secure
When Park Place says, “Smarter Data Center Support,” it is
referring it to many elements of its work. Smarter Data
Center Support is proactive, predictive, and secure. It is
ParkView, a revolutionary service that proactively detects
equipment hardware faults 24/7 across storage, server, and
networking products that are maintained by the company.
The related alerts are then securely transmitted to Park Place
Technologies’ technical operations, enabling more timely
and accurate failure diagnosis, part identification, and
necessary repair actions. It is termed as revolutionary service
due to its key features which include proactive fault
detection, faster response and resolution times, accurate part
identification, faster first-time fixes, extremely secure, nondisruptive,
fully supported, easy implementation, and full
visibility.
Smart Data Center Support is a single pane of glass, with its
Central Park Portal, which allows its users to open, monitor
and close tickets, and manage their Park Place relationship,
all on one convenient and intuitive portal.
Smart Data Center Support is a better customer experience.
Instead of the antiquated and industry standard path of
several interactions, all leading to a guess at what may be
wrong, ParkView facilitates a direct, predictive, proactive
method for solving issues that saves time and allows its
users to allocate capital and human resources to more
productive areas of their business.
Smart Data Center Support is better service. Park Place can
engage with you 24/7, with on-staff support staff, triage
36 April 2019|

“
Smarter Data
Center Support.
—Chris Adams
President & CEO
experts and advanced engineers, from
almost any corner of the world. Park
Place serves 141 countries with a
“follow the sun” model that allows the
company to keep clients’ critical
systems up and running, from San
Diego to Boston to London to
Singapore.
Smart Data Center Support is saving
50%, guaranteed. Park Place delivers
all of its services, across scores of
OEM platforms, at a 50% savings off
client costs. That’s not a promise; it’s
their guarantee.
An Architect of Leadership,
Innovation and Change
An elite team of Park Place is led by
Chris Adams. He added the role of
Chief Executive Officer of Park Place
Technologies to his status as President
in January 2019. Chris’s most recent
role was President and Chief Operating
Officer for Park Place, where he
oversaw global operations, finance and
all Mergers & Acquisitions activity.
During his 10 years at Park Place,
Chris has served in a wide range of
leadership positions across operations
and finance, touching all areas of Park
Place. Chris was instrumental in
orchestrating 10 acquisitions over the
April 2019|
past two years and growing Park Place
from a North American to a Global
organization. Under his stewardship,
Park Place has grown from fewer than
250 employees to a global employer
that counts nearly 1,500 people in its
family.
Chris serves as executive sponsor of
the international Park Place STEM
initiative as well as other communitybased
programs focused on teaching
computer skills in underserved schools.
His goal is to foster a culture of
partnerships that makes Park Place a
destination work environment focused
on career growth for all associates.
Apart from this, he is an active thought
leader in the tech industry, contributing
bylines to many publications, and
speaking at conferences around the
world such as Gartner.
Testimonials from Park Place’s
Clienteles
“The support and response times I
received on this incident were
BETTER than ALL similar incidents
that I opened with the OEM
maintenance support. I am extremely
impressed with the service I received
today.” - Ismael Hernandez, The
Larson Group
“You guys are fantastic!! I am really
impressed with the service and really
appreciate the effort. I can go away
next week with peace of mind now that
this power supply is functional.” –
Belinda Daniel, City of Port Colborne
“Great and prompt customer service.
The technician calling and the ones
coming on site are very proficient and
professional.” – Steven Christensen,
CloudWave
37

Missing
The Piece in
HR Suites
enefits of An Integrated HRIS
BStrategy
As many organizations undertake HR
transformation initiatives, they are starting to
realize the benefits of moving to a cloudbased
HR platform. They combine core HR
functions with recruiting, talent management,
workforce planning and learning into a
single, enterprise-wide software suite.
They offer the simplicity of use, improved
service and delivery model and full data
integration. Topics that were traditionally
separated are now coming together as part of
strategy, planning, and end-user enablement.
Because HR Platforms are built on a single
code line, they can link data in real-time and
unify end-to-end business processes
seamlessly. IT and HR teams are now able to
focus on strategic business decisions instead
of administrative tasks. The adoption of
38 April 2019|

cloud solutions with multiple releases a
year provides agility and innovation at
less cost. Companies have realized
tremendous bottom-line savings from a
reduction in the total cost of ownership
over existing on-premise solutions.
Total Compensation Management:
The Missing Piece in Any HR Suite
An increasing number of organizations
are taking steps to realize the benefits
of moving to a SaaS-based core HR
platform to support their HR
transformation strategy. On their
journey, many of these companies have
discovered that reliance on a core HR
platform for compensation
management has been too restrictive,
requiring them to conform their highly
individualized and requisite
compensation processes to their core
HR system. Best in Class HR
Platforms, regardless of the vendor,
have proven incapable of meeting the
full functional requirements of Total
Compensation. To ensure that they
manage rewards and compensation
effectively, and without any
restrictions, a dedicated compensation
solution is required.
beqom is a Total Compensation cloud
solution that connects directly into an
organization’s HR suite, saving their
suite approach and saving their
compensation strategy. Secure,
integrated and fully configurable, the
beqom solution meets the requirements
and complexities that a HR core
platform is unable to achieve. As
requirements vary by industry, a “onesize-fits-all”
approach doesn’t work.
Industry leaders typically take pride in
the way they reward their people, and
they want to do it “their way.”
beqom has proven to be a viable
approach for large global organizations
to support them during their HR
transformation journey. In many cases,
beqom first replaced a highly
customized on-premise compensation
management solution to then integrate
with a new HR (cloud) suite, removing
all compensation management risks
during the transformation while
providing a positive transformational
experience.
Driving Business Results Through
Beqom:
Improved Performance
Based on beqom-delivered analytics,
beqom customers have redefined
rewards program to better align with
goal achievement and career
development. Companies have
reported greater employee engagement
for those employees whose job
satisfaction was correlated with
compensation.
Increased Efficiency
Companies have achieved total
automation of all their compensation
processes including simulation of
salary, STI, the salary review process
and bonus management on the beqom
platform. beqom eliminates all manual
data manipulation across multiple
sources and teams and enables total
rewards teams to spend more time
thinking strategically about the
business by having more insight into
all compensation processes.
Diversity and Inclusion
By consolidating performance and
compensation data in beqom,
customers have been able to start more
effective fair pay initiatives by taking
into account indicators such as
performance, attainments, performance
ratings, promotion rate, and
professional experience. One customer
recently streamlined career path and
succession planning processes for one
pool of employees based on a
combination of historical data and
performance measures.
Expert’s Advice
Compliance
beqom has architected a solution
compliant with data privacy and
security requirements from around the
globe, providing customers with full
transparency and auditability into its
compensation data for reporting to
regulatory authorities.
Competitive Advantage
beqom customers have a gainful
advantage by empowering their HR
teams to unify the execution of their
business objectives for talent
acquisition, performance management,
talent retention, diversity, and
inclusion. HR leaders can map their
strategic objectives to compensation
initiatives through continuous
improvement and real-time data. This,
in turn, has produced higher
performing and happier teams.
Because beqom offers complete
functionality for global compensation
management and is ERP-HR Platform
neutral, it’s customers understand that
their choice of beqom is an investment
that allows them to realize their vision
for HR transformation.
About beqom
beqom’s mission is to make your
people happy because employee
happiness is the best driver of success:
It directly leads to better employee
motivation, engagement, and retention.
But happiness doesn’t come from more
money or compensation. It comes from
your employees understanding:
● The link between their role and the
company strategy
● How they are rewarded and
recognized for achieving these goals
and if it is fair
Contact us today— info@beqom.com
or visit www.beqom.com to learn
more.
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39