TECHNOLOGY

Microsoft Sri Lanka celebrates seventh anniversary

In 2004 Microsoft came to Sri Lanka with the ambition of bringing the magic of software to all Sri Lankans, and positively transforming the local IT landscape. The company marks seven years of empowering businesses and enriching lives of over 1.5 million people of the country.

Sriyan de Silva Wijeyeratne

President Mahinda Rajapaksa in a message of felicitation said, "Among the primary objectives of my government is to increase ICT literacy to assist the forward march of the country. Microsoft has contributed greatly to increase ICT literacy in Sri Lanka since its establishment.

Playing commendable role in increasing ICT penetration into the rural sector of the country by its Gamata IT initiative, which has established a partnership with the Tharunayata Hetak Movement, the ICTA, the Ministry of Education and Singer Sri Lanka.

I look forward to the support of Microsoft Sri Lanka towards the nation's economic growth and its continued collaboration with my government, especially with the Ministry of Telecommunication and Information Technology, to realise the nation's goals of economic development and progress."

Microsoft Country Manager, Sriyan de Silva Wijeyeratne, said "The last seven years have been tremendously exciting. We have grown into a company which is valued by all stakeholders for its contributions that extend far beyond a 'business as usual' approach".

P. Nirmalan-Director, Uni Walkers (Pvt) Ltd and Kazuhiro Yamanishi, General Manager - Marketing Group, Corporate Management Division for Asia and Oceania, Panasonic Corporation, at the press briefing.

Launch of 'Eco Navi' air-conditioners

'Eco Navi' (from Ecology Navigation) air-conditioners by Panasonic automatically sense human presence, location and activity level to operate in the most efficient and energy saving way.

These models are guaranteed to bring energy consumption to low levels by the touch of a button with optimum performance, flexibility and high-efficiency," said Kazuhiro Yamanishi - General Manager of Panasonic Corporation, Corporate Management Division for Asia and Oceania at the launch of Eco Navi air-conditioners at the Architects Exhibition.

Panasonic also launched the Flexi System (FS) Multi Air-Conditioning System, Ultra-Large Full HD 3D Plasma Displays (103-inch is displayed at exhibition), and a wide variety of system products such as PBX, Phone, FAX, security camera and ceiling fan, which are intended to mainly attract architects and business-to-business (BtoB) customers.

Tally ERP 9 Series 'A' Release 3.0 launched

India's leading business management software company - Tally Solutions launched Tally.ERP 9 Series 'A' Release 3.0, specifically designed for seamless business execution. Advanced Business Solutions (Pvt) Ltd the sole partner for Tally in Sri Lanka launched this software in Sri Lanka parallel to its global release.

New features and enhanced functionalities include bank allocation that eases transactions and processing; extending its reach in the Middle East with the introduction of its bidirectional language feature; simplification of business processes via Job Work.

With these capabilities Tally becomes India's most comprehensive business management software and extends its reach beyond borders to more than one thousand businesses using this software to leverage their businesses.

Tally also provides a feature that facilitates inter-currency conversion - allowing the user to select a base currency and converts the consolidated reports of all international branches of the business into the same. This facility requires the user to feed the current currency exchange values into the system.

President, Tally Solutions (Pvt) Ltd Shoaib Ahmed said, "Most often 'simple' is confused with 'basic'. Tally.ERP 9 is very simple to use, yet comprehensive. The focus has been to absorb the complexity of providing a simple yet functionally rich and flexible product. With the inclusion of the new features, the capability of Tally.ERP 9 has gone a couple of notches up."

Tally.ERP 9 is compatible with languages that follow the right to left script. On selecting Arabic as the Display language, Tally.ERP 9 will switch over to the right to left script retaining all the existing functionalities and reports intact. This feature will enable businesses in the Middle East to interact more freely with the rest of the world, view and print reports from Arabic to English or Vice-Versa.

"There is a good demand for Tally from various international businesses due to the advanced language capabilities it has. Tamil is another language that is supported by Tally and hence we expect a good demand from the North and East provinces in Sri Lanka," said Head of Sales and Marketing Advanced Business Solutions (Pvt) Ltd, Prasad Wijesuriya.

Other features of Tally.ERP 9 Release 3.0 include the new banking module, enhanced cheque printing function, job work module, image printing facility and advanced order management feature.

The Banking module makes transactions easier to record, execute, and monitor by filters such as dates, payment modes, and modes of transactions; simplifying records paving a comprehensive route for smooth bank reconciliations. It also allows automatic carrying forward of un-reconciled bank transactions from the current year to the subsequent year. Hence it saves time, reduces errors and improves productivity.

The enhanced cheque printing configuration with a separate "Cheque Printing" report enables multiple cheque printing with ease. The benefit here is that the cheque details can also be recorded after printing.

The Job Work module promises to reduce cycle times, increase efficiency and cut costs; it has the capability to create easier manufacturing workflows and simplify inventory management. Multiple order tracking, tracking of stages of Work-in-progress or assessing the status of finished goods becomes easy.

So whether it is stock valuation, generating a profit analysis on finished goods or raising a bill of material the Job Work feature in Tally makes all of this possible.

With the image printing facility a customer can print his company logo on his invoices and reports.

Pre closure of orders enables closing of pending orders without making any additional entries and without amending the existing orders.

This helps in maintaining accurate pending order summaries and preventing losses from dead stock.

Optimising Employee-Corporate Objectives

hSenid Business Solutions hosted the 'CEOs Breakfast Meeting' for senior business executives and entrepreneurs at the Colombo Hilton last week.

Ravindran Ragunathan, Human Resource Director, InQpharm Group, Malaysia shared his ideologies on "Managing Staff Productivity and Analysis via automation" whilst Mwoka Matuku Willy, Corporate ICT Manager, AMREF Africa and Sunil Dissanayake, Head Human Resources/Services, Hayleys Group shared their thoughts on "Overall Impact of automating HR to the Organisation" and "Align and Measure Employee Objective to Corporate Objectives via Hoshin-Kanri Appraisal Model" respectively.

A delegation of 150 HR practitioners participated on this case study oriented session on how to adopt strategies to gain a competitive edge by having automated HR practices.

The breakfast meeting paved the way for the hSenid Business Solutions organised inaugural International HRM conference 2011 which focused on the issues of Unleashing HR Potential to compete globally.

The conference provided the platform for CEOs and HR practitioners to learn how human capital can be used as the key differentiator in building competitive advantage in their businesses and achieving global success.

The conference brought together over 200 companies and a host of practitioners locally and internationally from the HR domain under one roof featuring nine speakers from diverse industries representing six countries.

Intel promotes global competition through ISEF

The Sri Lanka Science and Engineering Fair (SLSEF) 2010, took place recently at the Institution of Engineers Sri Lanka (IESL) auditorium. The event, a prelude to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) was an opportunity for local students to showcase cutting edge ideas and to be able to compete at the global event to be held in May 2011. Two local winners of this year's event will represent Sri Lanka at the Intel ISEF while the other will participate as an observer. Intel will sponsor two individual projects and one group project winners along with the adult-in-charge to participate at 63rd ISEF to be held May 8-13 in USA.

(Seated from left) Eng. Jayantha Ranatunga, Eng (Dr) Sarath Abayawardana, Eng. (Prof) Ananda Jayewardene, Vidyajyothi Prof. Rezvi Sheriff, Eng. J. Meegoda and Country Business Manager, Intel EM Ltd - Sri Lanka Liaison Office Indika de Zoysa.