Manoj Ranaweera Posts

Sri Lanka is currently going through a bad period. Smell of a forthcoming war with LTTE (Tamil Tigers, most ruthless terrorist group in the world) is in the air. Tourism is down. The hotel I am staying in, Trans Asia,  is nearly empty. People are keeping a low profile and keeping away from busy crowded locations. But life and business continues. People in here are used to worst conditions than this. Government is taking all it can to avoid repeat of another war. However, this is having a profound impact on ebdex, which I am trying to address. We have…

I promised to report after attending the excellent and inspiring "talk" given by Lord Karan Bilimoria at Manchester Business School. Karan has gone through similar "pain" that I am going through 15 years or so ago. When Karan started he knew nothing about brewing beer. He had to learn fast. He constantly received "NO" as an answer. It motivated him further to be successfull. Here are the key messages I took home: 1. Make it a global brand – it’s all about brand equity. ebdex was set-up with this in mind.2. Against all odds – Karen had a partner. I…

I have been chatting to Dennis Howlett regarding blogging platforms, as I recently decided to use wordpress as my blogging platform, moving away from Blogger due to less functionality.  Dennis has recently written an excellent article about blogging platforms. He summarises the article by saying…… Geekiness is pretty much a requirement once you get past the no-brainer freebies. Instructions for add-ins like Technorati, FeedBurner and so on are not as clear to end users as they are to geeks. But then it is important to remember that despite the ‘age’ of blog technology (it’s been around for 5 years), it…

I finally decided to settled for this wordpress template. My blog at blogger.com will continue to function until this site is picked up by search engines. I have also invited Suren Kannangara, our CTO and CEO of our strategic technology partner, Affno to join me as a guest author. So please do welcome Suren. Affno is going through significant growth including increasing their activities in UK. I will leave Suren to blog about affno, what interests him and his relationship with ebdex. Update 1: New articles will no longer be published on blogger.com.

 I arrived in Sri Lanka on Monday the 3rd for a fortnight to discuss testing and debugging with our strategic technology partner, Affno. The Etihad flight from Manchester to Abu Dhabi was almost empty, but the flight from Abu Dhabi to Colombo had only 7 spare seats. It was jam packed with Sri Lankans returning home from employment in Abu Dhabi – mainly due to start of the summer holiday season! The heat in the Middle East during summer is unbearably over 40 degrees Celsius. Many families escape the summer all together. Specially the families of expats – I used…

Could not resist not sharing such an interesting cartoon with you.

Karan Bilimoria, Founder of Cobra Beer and TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) UK Board Member is expected to deliver an inspiring lecture at Manchester Business School on 21 June 2006. It was scarcely 15 years ago that Karan Bilimoria made a choice that would change his life forever. Spotting a gap in the beer market between the fizzy lagers and heavy ales that clogged the shelves – and paired poorly with food – Karan came up with an entirely new idea: Cobra. Specially brewed to be smoother and less gassy than regular lagers, Cobra is the perfect accompaniment to all foods…

Having blogged for two months at http://manojranaweera.blogspot.com, I got to the point where I found the presentation of my blogging pages no longer acceptable. This was as a result of looking at blogs written in WordPress. My first blog was written in and hosted by Blogger.com. At the same time, I felt that there need to be more focus on marketing of ebdex. I also want to continue to speak about the industry and the pain and joy I am experiencing whilst getting ebdex off the ground to deliver our strategic plans. So on one crazy night I ended up…

In May 2006, Inovium Corp. announced the launch of InoviumPay Central, an electronic billing and payment system designed for businesses that currently accept credit cards payments. Built-in functionality includes payment scheduler, electronic submission of all invoices, integration and batch uploading to any major accounting system, and full management control and reporting, allowing the company to streamline operations and free up labor. The solution is offered free to any company or organization worldwide utilizing their existing merchant card provider for a limited period.

Based on a survey sample of 1012 businesses in UK, 69% have said that their invoicing systems are not integrated with their own accounting systems. Among those who have integrated, only 10% achieved seamless data exchange between their own systems. It seems that the survey has not collected data on exchange of invoices electronically between organisations (suppliers and buyers). One can assume this might be close to 0%. Another figure from the report shows 14% of the businesses using e-invoicing at present, with another 9% planning to implement such solutions within the next 2 years. Once again there is no…