Technology

Journey towards excellence :

Competing with quality as a differentiator

By Gamini WARUSHAMANA

Quality is a prerequisite in order to be a valuable player in any business and it has always been the foundation of our business at Eurocenter. We were able to build a world class company because of the quality of our services in the global market, said the CEO of Eurocenter DDC, Mano Sekaram.

Mano Sekaram

Eurocenter is a Software Engineering Company established in 2000 and headquartered out of Sri Lanka in Oslo, Norway mainly focusing on the European market. Mano Sekaram also serves as the Chairman of the Lanka Software Foundation an ‘Open source R&D initiative’ and is the head of SLASSCOM Quality Forum. He is also a member of the Presidential Task Force for English and IT, a member of the Board of

Management at the University of Colombo, School of

Computing and a member of the Consultative Board at the IT faculty of the University of Moratuwa.

Following are excerpts from his interview with the Sunday Observer.

In the global IT/BPO landscape of today there are over 100 countries positioning themselves as ‘Outsourcing destinations’ and over 5000 companies which are competing worldwide.

This is a ‘red ocean’ where the competition is intense. The Asian region including China, India and Philippines play a big role as over 50 percent of the companies are located in this region.

Low cost is the driver for the global outsourcing business. The value proposition is around cost arbitrage in the IT/BPO industry. However, early on in this decade we observed that the perception of European customers was that a low cost destination means low quality, unpredictable delivery and low value.

Understanding this fundamental market condition in 2004, Eurocenter embarked on ‘a journey towards excellence’ and re-aligned our business.

We embraced quality as the key differentiator believing that ‘commonality will not create competitiveness’. Hence quality and predictability were the foundation of our business differentiators at the beginning of our journey.

Even though we have added other differentiators (such as technical expertise and niche domain knowledge) over time, ‘Quality and predictability’ still remain the underlining business differentiators in all engagements.

Quality means different things to different people. To us it encompasses six main aspects.

It is about predictability of our delivery capabilities, productivity and quality of our people, reduction of cycle time, compliance to processes and standards, reduction of defects and customer satisfaction.

Eurocenter’s journey towards excellence had several stages. During the first stage (quality culture stage) we developed a ‘culture of quality’ in our organization by inculcating discipline into the workforce and creating a culture with that of a passion for quality, which exceeded customer expectations.

Commonality will not create competitiveness

Most importantly we hired the best in the industry and trained the existing to be the best.

In the second stage (institutionalization stage) we implemented a process, a quality management system (QMS). We institutionalized our processes, and built supporting tools and a system to track defects, time and lessons learnt.

In order to institutionalize, a bit of policing was required in order to enforce the process.

Thereafter we put in place a mechanism to constantly review quality at every stage in our software development and delivery process.

The third stage (compliance stage) of our journey was to comply with international standards and best practices.

We obtained ISO 9001:2000 quality certification for our processes and were periodically audited by the external auditors, DNV. Then we embarked on a major revolution to comply with CMMi standards, a journey which took us 18 months. We partnered with QAI who helped us in the process of certification.

The Sri Lankan Government, through the ICTA partly funded this quality certification and we became the first Sri Lankan IT company to be CMMi certified. This was indeed a major step in our journey towards excellence.

Measurements and metrics are critical in our journey towards excellence.

We believe if you cannot measure, you cannot improve. So we monitored metrics such as how many bugs are created per hour, how much of time is spent on rework as opposed to constructive work, classification of defects based on criticality, effort and schedule variance, and pass rate of testing, just to name a few. Based on our measurements we were able to continuously improve our processes. All these measurements are available on a real-time basis through our very own project management and tracking tool, Spider.

We completed the fourth stage of our journey (quantitatively managed stage) where we quantitatively manage our business which means there is no guess work in managing our business. For example today we know that every Eurocenter Programmer will produce a bug (Program error) every eight hours and we also know the associated rework to rectify this bug.

Hence our estimation is based on a scientific quantitative model rather than guess work.

We have built business intelligence systems which gives us the required information to manage our business quantitatively.

Today we are a mature company embarking on the innovation stage.

Finally quality and excellence must deliver business value and benefits.

It must reflect in your return on investment and in your bottom line.

To us at Eurocenter, our journey towards excellence has given us many business benefits such as ‘predictability’. For example our schedule variance for project delivery is a plus or minus 10 percent.

Hence we can go to market and tell our customers we will deliver the product on time, giving a plus or minus 10 percent variance and we can give them the assurance because we have these statistics to back up our claims.

Predictability is one of the most important considerations in this business because if there is no predictability there is no trust in your product or service.

If there are critical defects at customer delivery, it hampers your business and the cost of recovery is higher than the cost of the product. The ideal example, in the recent past is that of Toyota cars sent into the market with critical defects.

This kind of situation ruins your company image. We are proud to say that in the last three years we have not delivered any product with critical defects and we can give a 100 percent guarantee that our solutions are free of critical defects. Thus having no cost of fixing critical defects.

If you are able to ensure the quality of your product or service at a higher level, the customer will be willing to pay a higher price and you are also able to demand a higher price.

This helps you to increase your margins and quality acts as a differentiator. We were able to triple our hourly billing rate after we started our journey towards excellence in 2004.

Our customer satisfaction index is always increasing. The cost of rework has been reduced by 48 percent. Today we can compete with any company while maintaining the quality image, which is important within the market.

At national level too the IT BPO industry needs this focus on quality in order for Sri Lanka to become a vibrant competitor in the global market. As a small nation Sri Lanka cannot be a volume player like India or China, where price is the differentiator but, we can become a value player where quality and innovation is the differentiator.

As a nation with a population of 20 million we need to differentiate by developing value differentiators and building quality products and services.

We can’t reduce prices because we cannot reduce the cost of labour hence we cannot compete with price.

The alternative is to embark on developing quality products and services and to climb up the value chain. The global software outsourcing market is US$ 300 billion and we only deliver US$ 300 million in IT BPO exports.

This journey towards quality excellence should be at national and at industry level, where the view should be to build a quality ecosystem. One or two companies from Sri Lanka cannot say that we are world class quality companies delivering high quality products and services.

It must be remembered that a Sri Lankan company “X” is not competing with another country’s company “Y”.

It is the ecosystems that compete in the world. Therefore building a robust and vibrant quality ecosystem is necessary in order to compete globally.

We should build the country’s image of ‘high quality software from Sri Lanka’.

For that the whole ecosystem should be uplifted and all the companies or the industry as a whole should ensure that products are of high quality.

Everyone should embrace quality. The government has a great role to play in this journey.

The government is extremely supportive. In 2004, the government provided grants through ICT agencies for 41 software companies to achieve quality certification. Of them 34 companies have been successful.

Fifty percent of our software companies will have quality certification.

While we recognize the importance of quality it may no longer be the key differentiator although it was, at a certain time. Quality is a prerequisite to compete in the global markets.

It should be used as a foundation to build niche expertise required if Sri Lanka wants to stand out in the global Software/BPO industry.

Directory on mobile WAP for Sri Lanka

by Sapumali GALAGODA

SLT Publications (Pvt) Ltd. publishers of SLT Rainbow Pages, has developed a comprehensive, diversified and nationally accepted database. The many years of experience in publishing commercial and residential directories has helped it compile the information which is accessible via media such as the Directory CD, call center, web portal and WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) portal and WAP for mobile phone users.

CEO SLT Publications (Pvt) Ltd Malraj Balapitiya said that mobilephone growth is very high in Sri Lanka. Rainbow Pages with its vast experience in publishing directory information and developing databases thought it fitting that directory information be made available for the fast expanding mobile user community as well.

This led to the introduction of WAP which is the latest mobile browser developed to access information from the comprehensive and continually updated Rainbow Pages directory database.

The WAP browser is easy to install, affordable and readily accessible.

“Mobile service providers in Sri Lanka-Dialog, Mobitel, Airtel and Hutch have obtained our services to provide their customers access to this treasure trove of information that can be obtained by logging onto www.rainbowpages.mobi via WAP.

This innovation introduced by the SLT Group will seamlessly merge with other telecom service providers to provide mobile directory information, he said.

Balapitiya said that the company has crossed all boundaries and moved from being a conventional directory information provider to a provider of socially valuable information for the convenience of the public.

For people on the move in vehicles or on bikes, information about islandwide petrol sheds including their opening hours and type of fuel available, garages, towing servics, battery and tyre dealers are listed.

For entertainment lovers-current films shown,theatre dramas, restaurants of various categories, Chinese, Japanese, fast food are displayed.

For house wives-food recipes, shopping information, beauty tips.

Access to business information is indispensable for the economy to grow.

The mobile phone is the best tool through which information can be accessed, said General Manager Sales and Marketing Ruwan Wijetunga.

He also said that this facility will be an effective tool for disseminating any kind of information to the public and that the phenomenal growth of mobile phones will certainly prove that this medium is most beneficial to all.

The WAP service was formally launched last year by President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Launch of printonline.lk

The first online printing company was launched by Ygen Advertising Solutions in Sri Lanka recently.

Online printing is a multi-million industry in western countries.

Founder of printonline.lk, Sheriefdeen M Irshad said “We had a dream.

It has become a reality after three months of hard work.

The specialty of printonline.lk is that it is fully developed in-house with no outsourcing. Our industry experience helped make this site dynamic and customer oriented. As an advertising agency of the Y Generation (Ygen) we are looking forward to introduce more creative solutions to Sri Lanka.”

He said that the prevailing non-customer oriented printing industry frustrates people. But printonline.lk is totally customer oriented and gives an easy, flexible and reliable way of printing. A wide range of products can be chosen and printing could start at your desk. You do not need to come out of your office. Just be wherever you are and start to print through printonline.lk; they will take care of everything from designing to delivery.

Motorola introduces four MOTO WX series phones

Motorola Inc. a global leader in mobile telecommunications, expanded its popular MOTO WX range with four new entry-level mobile devices to allow more people to stay connected in Sri Lanka.

The MOTO WX range features the stylish MOTO WX161 & WX181 candybar handset with FM radio and integrated torch light and MOTO WX260 and MOTO WX290 which adds Bluetooth, integrated MP3 players, expandable memory of up to 2GB and GPRS connectivity to the MOTO WX feature set in candybar form factors.

“The aim has been to meet the changing needs of our consumers in Sri Lanka and make mobile communication available to the widest possible audience.

These four new mobiles deliver just that by offering affordable solutions for talking, texting, taking photos and listening to music,” said Vice President Marketing, EMARA (Europe, Middle East, Africa, Russia and Asia) - Motorola Mobile Devices & Home, Andrew Morley. “We are very happy to offer a one year replacement warranty to our Sri Lanka consumers on these four new MOTO WX handsets.”

MOTO WX161 - Your Life in Tune

MOTO WX161 keeps you connected with calls and SMS, with a soundtrack provided by the embedded FM radio and RDS4 that lets users display song and station information.

The sleek and compact design combined with a 3.3 cm (1.3inch) display, long-life battery and built-in LED torch makes the MOTOTM WX161 the ideal entry level mobile phone for Sri Lanka consumers. The speakerphone gives an office-quality sound with the convenience of a hands-free device.

MOTO WX181 - Your Life in Colour

MOTO WX181 livens up any conversation with a cool 3.8 cm (1.5inch) colour display and FM radio with integrated RDS4 which shows the songs, artists and genres along with a stereo headset. With a built-in LED torch, this phone can also light up the way in dark areas and allows up to five people to join a call simultaneously for conference calls on-the-go.

Other features include a calculator, currency converter and alarm clock.

MOTO WX260 - Your Life In Tune Combining an FM radio and MP3 player, the MOTO WX260 is a music maverick with WAP 2.0 that also allows you to browse the web and download personalised ringtones 2&7.

This candybar style handset with a 4.4 cm (1.7inch) colour display offers a genuine music playing experience with wireless freedom of Bluetooth 2.0 and offers up to 11 hours of non-stop music 4,8&10.

MOTO WX260 lets users listen to their favourite tunes anywhere, offer wireless calls with Bluetooth 2.0, and stores up to 2GB8 of music via an optional micro SD card. With storage of up to 500 messages and 800 contacts, the MOTO WX 260 can light up areas with its bright LED torch.

MOTO WX290 - Your Life in Full Camera, music, style! MOTO WX290 also have many exciting features. Featuring a 4.5 cm (1.7 inch) colour screen, embedded digital camera, Bluetooth 2.01& 2 and MMS2, MOTO WX290.

Airtel launches 1000th base station

Bharti Airtel Lanka launched its 1000th base station at Dodangaslanda, Kurunegala recently.

The construction of 1,000 base stations took place within a record 750 days since commencement of the company’s network rollout.

Representatives from the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka, the Urban Development Authority, the Central Environmental Authority, the Provincial Environmental Authority, from Airtel’s vendor partners, as well as Airtel’s comprehensive managed services partner Huawei, who is responsible for the supervision of operations of the network in Sri Lanka were present.

CEO and MD Bharti Airtel Lanka Amali Nanayakkara said: “The deployment of Airtel’s 1000th base station manifests our intention to contribute significantly to the country’s growth agenda for telecom by making mobile communication accessible to more Sri Lankans.

First looks at new iPod Nano, Touch, Apple TV, iTunes

Few if any major surprises emerged from Apple’s press event San Francisco recently. The crowd was more or less expecting a new iPod Touch with front and rear cameras and FaceTime video calling that makes it that much more like an iPhone 4 without the phone part or a wireless contract.

And no one was shocked that Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled a smaller and, at $99, far cheaper version of the Apple TV set-top box that Jobs often has referred to as a “hobby.”

And with “social” the mantra of all things tech nowadays, the appearance of the new music-oriented Ping social network inside iTunes 10 it borrows elements from Twitter and Facebook also shouldn’t have come out of left field.

Over the coming weeks, I plan to try out all of Apple’s new offerings. In the meantime, here are some quick thoughts:

The iPod Nano used to be the most popular iPod. That distinction surprisingly now belongs to the more expensive iPod Touch.

Both devices are getting a makeover as is the ever-more-diminutive iPod Shuffle, now just $49 with 2 gigabytes of storage.

Business Wire The new Nano sports a multitouch display. Adding a multitouch interface to the Nano is probably the biggest change, a development that let Apple designers take the device to half the size and weight of the previous generation.

You’ll have to rely on multitouch, because Apple did away with the click-wheel folks used to use to access songs, artists, albums and playlists.

There’s no home button as there is on the iPhone. Instead, you hold down your finger against the display to return to the Home screen.

Ministry of Education, Intel felicitate ISEF awardee

At a ceremony held recently at the auditorium of the Ministry of Education, young Ganindu Nanayakkara was felicitated by the Minister of Education, Bandula Gunawardena, and Vice President, Sales and Marketing Group, General Manager, Intel World Ahead Program Intel Corporation, John Davis for his outstanding achievements at the 61st Intel International Science & Exhibition Fair held in San Jose, California. The felicitation ceremony was attended by leading officials from the Ministry of Education and Intel.

Ganindu Nanayakkara who was part of the 5 member team that represented Sri Lanka at the Intel ISEF performed exceptionally well to pick up four awards under the theme ‘Computer Controlling Wireless Device For Handicapped People’.

Ganindu took top honours when he won the Intel ISEF Grand Award for Computer Science.

He also came first and was presented with an award from the China Association for Science & Technology. Symantec Corporation then gave a runners-up award to Ganindu. In addition he was presented with a special award of repute from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance/ The Lemelson Foundation.

Ganindu is a student of Ananda College, Colombo 10 who represented the Junior Inventor of the Year (JIY) competition of IESL at the Sri Lanka Science & Engineering Fair (SLSEF). The SLSEF is a partnership of the Ministry of Education, National Science Foundation, Institution of Engineers Sri Lanka (IESL) and Intel since 2007.

Debug, Epson ‘Corporate Solutions launch’

Debug Computer Peripherals together with Epson introduced the latest range of Epson wireless office products including single function and multi-function printers, 3LCD multi-media projectors and energy saving business inkjets at the ‘Corporate Solutions Launch’ held at the Grand Ballroom, Hotel Galadari, recently.

The highlight of the launch was the introduction of the latest interactive projector Epson 450wi and the cost efficient energy saving laser sharp business inkjets B300/310 and 510DN with Duplex printing and network.

The event was attended by a gathering of corporate clientele from banks, government institutions/education/leasing and financial institutions and insurance.

EPSON together with its partner Debug Computer Peripherals, is committed to helping businesses to enhance productivity with their latest range of Epson products.