Category: Other

Have a look at Coupa and then read Dave Stephens blog on e-procurement. He has a well experienced team – all ex-Oracle guys!  I am jealous Dave! I am doing the hard way and we will eventually get there – I meant building a superb team! Dave and I are speaking of linking both technologies sometime in the near future. We both have huge tasks of getting our first releases out! We both have missed deadlines to deal with. We also share some competitors. Here is what Dave recently said about Ariba: In other news Ariba came in light on…

Just had a sneak preview of Vyew 2.0. This was first reviewed by me in May 06. There are more functions than before. You can upload a Microsoft Power Point slide pack. However, slide pack is automatically converted to individual slides, which results in lost of any animation. I do not like this. In addition, it does not allow a file stored in one computer to be edited by your team located elsewhere. This feature is provided by Yuuguu.  I still believe you need number of different tools to provide a truly collaborative environment for remote workers. Mandatory tools include…

Have you ever wondered if there is a way to jointly edit a document stored on one of your team member’s computer thousands miles away from you? My friends Philip and Anish just brought such a facility to the market. I trialled it today with my development team in Sri Lanka with Skype providing the voice capability. Unfortunately the bandwidth was an issue when dealing with Sri Lanka, but Philip informed me this is not the case in here. We may use this tool for sales and supports. Yuuguu has a clear road map of bringing additional functionality over the…

Today, our plan was to upload the first release of ebdex Document Exchange to UK servers. Alas! this was not meant to be. A fuel crisis in Sri Lanka meant that my team had to go home earlier than usual. Hope they all manage to get home safely. How do you plan for such? We had fuel shortages, terrorist attacks, heavy storms in UK from time to time. Very disruptive to business, indeed!

I am finally back in UK (arrived on 20th), having spent over 2 weeks with my development team in Sri Lanka. We have a new team in place and they are having to cope with some tough targets over the next few weeks. I also came back with a "pre-release" which needs to be loaded up and re-tested. Then we should be able to connect up our initial clients. The pre-release will allow invoices to be exchanged. Its a web-to-web solution and has an Inbox and a Outbox. Will reveal further next week.

Sri Lanka was a British Colony for over 200 years before gaining independence in 1945. As such, institutions large and small followed and continue to follow British standards. But adaptation of these standards in Sri Lanka are continually been influenced by American standards, as more and more people are trained in US universities than in British universities. As an example, I was educated at Royal College in Colombo, the most prominent and the largest school in Sri Lanka with a history of over 150 years. After completing my GCSE Advance Level examinations in 1987, I moved to UK to undertake…

Why is Basel 2 important to Sri Lankan companies? Sri Lanka has set 1 January 2008 as the target date to implement "Basel 2". The key reason for adaptation seems to be the "credit ratings". Like all companies around the globe, Sri Lankan companies do need to borrow for growth (and other reasons) and would like to avoid paying high premium interest rates. Sri Lanka does not seems to have a decent credit scoring system and instead credit officers seem to rely on assessments made with their minds. The state of the mind of the individual at the time of…

Outlook just delivered a comment from Pankaj Shukla about blogging editors and Karan Bilimoria. I had a quick looked at Pankaj’s website, and I find myself another guy who has completed a MBA. I quite like the following he has written: When most of the followings are true (see his article for the full list) then you know that you have completed your MBA: You ask the waiter what the restaurant’s core competencies are. You do not believe in any problems in your life, just issues and improvement opportunities. You can actually use the term value-added without falling down laughing.…

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…