is There Life Below C-Level?

It isn’t even funny how many different ways a collection of companies interpret the role of the CEO. There  are  certain expectations from the chief but all in all, there are two kinds of CEOs – the exclusive and the inclusive.One leads by creating an enabling environment and working with everyone to aggressively move forward while the other just sits at the top and waits for everyone else to follow. Either way you look at it, the CEO is unarguably, the most powerful spot in the company’s hierarchy. Read more

The Eternal Optimist

Sajjad Syed is the Managing Director for SAP in Pakistan. In a time when one would think companies have to cut costs, Sajjad talks about how smart investment in technology and infrastructure and how it will help Pakistani companies grow in the longrun. “Companies have to invest today so they are prepared for the growth and competition that will happen when the markets begin their upward trends again.” Read more

Let’s Take it From The Top, Shall We?

There really is no other place to start in an organization than at the top. Meet the leaders for a bit, talk to a few of the key members of the team, align the conversations and you’ll get a good idea of where the company is headed and how long it will take for them to get there. Believe me when I say this works. No matter what the culture is in the rest of the organization, if the commitment, drive and passion don’t flow from the top, there isn’t going to be a lot of progress taking place.
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TPS Pakistan

Winner: TPS Pakistan
CEO: Mohammad Sohail
Name of Application or Product: Iris
Website: tpsonline.com
Email: sohail@tpsonline.com

A switch allows the banks to offer its services on electronic delivery channels, which is essential for banks to survive and grow in today’s ferociously fast paced world. With TPS Pakistan’s IRIS as the enterprise switch, that gives the driving of ATMs/PO, integrates the delivery channels as well as provides back-office functions like Dispute Resolution, Monitoring and Settlement/Reconciliation. This consolidated approach of a switch is unique and it significantly improves the operational efficiency of the banks, gives 360 degree view of its customers and provides strong MIS important for decision making and knowing the trends. IRIS supports industry standard interfaces and protocols (ISO8583, XML, Web Services, ODBC, OCCI, etc.) to integrate to external systems and networks.
IRIS has evolved from Phoenix which has an install base of 55 institutions across 15 countries. A migration plan is currently being developed to migrate banks running on Phoenix to IRIS. Phoenix is driving the alternate distribution program of 22 banks, including 1Link, and is responsible for processing of over 80% of all transactions initiated by alternate delivery channels. Even before the formal launch of IRIS, it has been implemented in Atlas Bank and DIBL in Pakistan as well as in CBK in Kuwait.

PalmChip Pakistan

Winner: PalmChip Pakistan

Name of Product or Application: GeoTel

CEO: Jauher A. Zaidi

Website: palmchip.com

Email: anjum@palmchip.com

When infrastructure cables get damaged, the demand for solutions like GeoTel goes through the roof! While GIS systems can be used to document outside plant assets, they have no intrinsic capability to interact with the live network which makes the reporting of active faults not visible in a geographical context. On the other hand, while a network management system (NMS) provides live monitoring and management capabilities, it does not document the physical network in sufficient detail to help pinpoint the precise location of faults.

Rapid fault localization is particularly critical in the case of optical fiber outside plant, which can span a wide geographical area and run for thousands of kilometers. Faults could be localized rapidly by, receiving an alarm, remotely instructing pre-deployed OTDRs to identify the location of the faults and display the precise locations using GIS.

GeoTel provides outside plant asset documentation for copper, fiber optic, cellular, WiMAX and cable networks. It has a network management module that can act as a Manager of Managers (MoM) or interface with an existing MoM for getting network fault information. This fault information is made visible on in a GIS context. Network asset information in the GIS can be synchronized with the configuration information in network management systems. OTDR integration helps rapidly locate faults in fiber optic networks.

The product can facilitate any industry to allow operators to stream line operations, efficiently detect and managing faults, monitor performance, predict demand for a service or using a GIS based Customer Resource Management system; GeoTel has impact on a very large amount of users. As the number of users on the operators with GeoTel deployed scales so does its capability to address the needs of population at large.

Kraysis

Winner: Kraysis
CEO: Muhammad Jamil A. Goheer
Website: kraysis.com
Email: jamil@kraysis.com

Kraysis is Pakistan’s leading provider of third party software quality assurance services to both domestic and international clients. As the first provider of specialized testing services, Kraysis leads the market. The company first educates the software development companies on the savings they achieve through outsourced test and QA and then help them achieve the ROI through a multidimensional and experienced pool of professionals at Kraysis. The team provides services at different stages of the entire Software Quality Assurance (SQA) lifecycle that moves in parallel to the software development lifecycle.
Kraysis has in-house professionals that provide various types of testing including but not limited to functional, performance, security and usability. Moreover, the young team also provides the complete test planning, test case development, execution, reporting and documentation required in any typical QA model.

Plexus Pvt. Limited

Merit: Plexus Pvt. Limited
Name of Product or Application: Investment Management System
COO: Abdul Rahman
Website: plexuspk.com
Email: abdul.rahman@plexuspk.com

The Investment Management System caters to the the requirement of different users with the following features: Money Market Transactions, Capital Market Transaction which supports ready, future, CFS and Open End Funds, Credit Transaction, Lease Transaction, and Finance & Accounts. The system adheres to statutory as well as business rules requirements The solution developed by Plexus also enables Risk Management and Middle Office requirements.

Lumensoft

Winner: Lumensoft
Name of Product or Application: Candela Retail Chain Management System
CEO: Abdul Aziz
Website: lumensoft.com
Email: aziz@lumensoft.biz

Lumensoft’s flagship product, Candela, has been around for more than 7 years. Designed to satisfy the needs of both single location retail stores as well as multi-location retail chain stores.
The solution is a complete supply chain solution for managing the affairs of small to mid-sized retail businesses. System issues POs to vendors, tracks GRNs in warehouses, moves the stocks to retail outlets, and makes invoices against sales. CRM module is includes in this solution. Scalable and flexible, the solution can meet its market requirements as they grow. Developed using VB6 and SQL Server 2000, the company is migrating its product to .Net and SQL Server 2005. With additional features, the product will be available in the markets in the first quarter of 2009.

HealthLine

Merit: HealthLine
Name of Product or Application: HealthLine
CEO: Jahanzeb Sherwani
Website: www.cs.cmu.edu/~jsherwan/
Email: jahanzeb+pasha@gmail.com

Research and Development is one of the key areas where excellence needs to be achieved and consistent initiatives need to be taken in order to achieve potential water shed moments in technology innovation. PASHA also recognizes quality RnD ventures in order to encourage further quality investments into looking for new frontiers in technology development.
In this category PASHA recognizes the Healthline system, which is trying to develop a platform for Speech recognition, speech synthesis, dialog management, for Pakistani languages.  Currently, no commercial system for speech recognition in Urdu or Sindhi exists – Healthline has  developed a method that allows the use of a speech recognition engine created for one language (e.g. US English) to be used for another language (e.g. Sindhi) and in recent experiments, the application has shown a very accurate recognition rate (greater than 90%).  Results of this experiment are pending publication.
The company has also tested prototypes with low literate users in various parts of Sindh: in Memon Goth outside Karachi, in Wahi Pandi near Dadu, and in Umarkot, all in collaboration with a Karachi-based NGO (HANDS) that has been managing public health programs in the region for more than 10 years.  Through these prototype tests, the company has created a system that works very well for illiterate users and allows them to access information even if they have never been to school. Tests comparing the speech system to an equivalent touch-tone system showed that the speech system was preferred by users, and also enabled them to complete a set of information access tasks more accurately than the touch-tone system.
For a country largely made of people where Education is a challenge, verbal communications becomes vital. With telephony access rapidly rising, speech recognition can certainly be the next frontier. With this award, PASHA hopes to encourage the spread of knowledge and enhance mutually beneficial initiatives for the large community.

Marriala Consultants

Merit: Marriala Consultants
Name of Product or Application: eClinic
CEO: Maj(r) M. Arfaeen Iqbal
Website: marriala.net , eclinic.pk
Email: arfaeen@marriala.net

Many doctors use Word Processors and Spread Sheet applications to try to keep their patient history. This results in non-standardized data collection which is impossible to be shared or is very difficult to be integrated with other doctor’s records. eClinic offers a standardized method of data collection over the complete user spectrum. May it be the receptionist, doctor, accountant or top level health decision-makers. The use of a solution like eClinic is greatly felt in the medical community who wish to have access to standardized documentation.

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