Manoj Ranaweera Posts

When you think you are nearly there – something else happens to slow you down! That’s exactly what happened to me this afternoon. I was finalising some loose ends including software licenses, insurance and legal paper work. To my utter amazement, Bea quoted me a hefty price for weblogic 8.1, which immediately got me to think of migrating to Sun Java Applications Server, which is free. I have a crisis meeting with Affno and Bea to sort this out tomorrow. Are any of you use weblogic? I am very much interested in knowing the price tag you had to absorb!…

As you may know, Sir David Varney, Chairman of HMRC is to step down soon, and take on an advisory post at the Treasury. Sir David is an Alum of Manchester Business School, and I had the privilege to meet him when he gave a Vital Topics lecture. This meeting led me to visit HMRC to discuss deployment of ebdex Document Exchange to improve their accounts payable and receivable functions. However, at the time, we have not even written a single line of code and therefore did not meet the pre-qualification criteria. Tags: HMRC, Manchester Business School, David Varney, Vital…

One of my friends who recently launched a product, held a User Group Event recently. It was the first such event I attended. I was very much interested in learning so that when ebdex runs its User Conferences/Seminars, we have an appreciation from the "attendees" point of view. List below is what I took home:: Make sure attendees are comfortable as much as possible. This does not mean you have to provide executive seats, but ensure attendees are not under any pressure to "buy". Make sure the event does not turn into an "Amway" style pushy sale event. Remember, a…

Dave Stephens of Coupa (ex-Oracle Executive) has analysed quarterly revenues of SAP and Oracle. Here are the graphs. Visit his blog for the full analysis. Dave, how about doing a similar analysis on Ariba, Procuri, Bottomline Technologies and others from eProcurement point of view. Perhaps I ought to do it from EIPP point of view (time permitting). Tags: Coupa, eProcurement

We currently have following immediate requirements: Head of Sales – equity participation Head of Operations and Customer Service- equity participation Head of Product and Solution Development – equity participation All must be entrepreneurial. Do not apply if you are interested in becoming an employee. Tags: Entreprenuers

I just spent the whole day with Gerry, my mentor! Gerry got me to attend an Executive Coaching session run by Mark Cauchi of Sandler Sales Institute in the morning. Excellent session. Got me to think in a completely different way to approach prospects. I also had the pleasure to meet Simon Bain of TENdotZERO. Another great business! There is a lot I can learn from Simon. Tags: Silver Fox Ventures, Sandler Sales Institute, TENdotZERO

Recently John Beech, Managing Director of Access Accounting wrote: People are the lifeblood of any company. A cliché perhaps, but I can’t help being a great believer in the importance of investing in staff whether this is through training, self-development or enhancing their current role to make it more rewarding. Quite simply, we’ve found this approach to add great value to the company. This whole philosophy is part of our ‘always recruiting’ culture where we’re constantly on the lookout for talented individuals with spark, passion, creativity and vision – even if no role currently exists for them. There’s no denying…

In a previous article, I explained how the market can be segmented in to: Supplier-centric: sending documents such as invoices electronically from Accounts Receivable (A/R) systems. Purchaser/buyer-centric: receiving documents such as invoices electronically in to Accounts Payable (A/P) systems. Enterprise-centric: sending and receiving documents such as invoices electronically from/into A/R and A/P systems. Exchanges: Connects suppliers and buyers – many different configurations exists. Perhaps I will cover this under separate heading. ebdex Document Exchange can be used in following configurations: Web-to-Web: brings benefits to users. Web-to-End: brings benefits to users with significant benefit to "End" user. End-to-Web: brings benefits to…

Having introduced Tiyga on my blog few days ago, I am privileged to report that I have been invited to attend the 3rd User Group Event planned on 2nd August 06 by Tiyga! Katrina has achieved significant publicity since featuring on The Daily Telegraph‘s Trailblazers event and featuring on Orange. 1 month free trial has been offered to all Orange subscribers. I also understand that other mobile operators are also interested in partnering with Katrina. Tiyga is based on a simple concept. Yet the solution when correctly installed and used, gives unparallel visibility to how one spends his or her…

I have been testing our first release today. It looks better and stable than ever before. We have been testing and debugging since April 06. The web-to-web facility with e-mail notifications will be offered free to companies who register during the build up to formal launch later this year. If you are interested in trying out or using it for real, e-mail your contact details to [email protected] with your company details. Nimeshe, Manoj, Hemanjalee, Suchira, Roshan, Seshan and Suren (plus those guys and gals who were in the initial two teams – we lost over the year): Thank you very…