point
Menu
Magazines
Browse by year:
October - 2015 - issue > Company of the Month
AST Corporation Oracle Integration Partner Welcomes New Beginnings
SI Team
Friday, October 23, 2015
Pravin Kumar, President and CEO of AST Corporation of Naperville, Illinois, USA, is enthusiastic about the growth his company is realizing this year. AST is a specialized Oracle Systems Integrator, helping companies in the Public Sector, Transportation, Utilities, and Education industries to optimize their investments in Oracle applications. On September 15, the company welcomed newly-acquired Serene Corporation, a market leader in Oracle Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Master Data Management (MDM) solutions, to the family. Having just celebrated its 20th anniversary in July, AST Corporation continues to strengthen its delivery model with the acquisition of Serene Corporation, which has offices in Santa Clara, CA, India, and Australia. This new international Oracle Integration powerhouse is able to provide an entirely new set of solutions to customers in industries now including Hi-Tech, Health Sciences, Engineering & Construction and Financial Services. Kumar believes that AST's growth during the past two decades is reflective of its role-model-based organizational culture, and its commitment to employees and customers in fostering next-generation leadership. "Our firm was founded in 1995, and through the synergy of business knowledge and technology acumen of our workforce, we have been able to identify and deploy innovative solutions to manage ever-evolving customer needs," statesKumar, as he lists out an entire range of services that AST offers. With a vast repertoire of successful projects in Enterprise Resource Planning, Business Intelligence, Middleware, Customer Relationship Management, Managed Services, Project Advisory, and Infrastructure Services, the award-winning Oracle Integrator is gearing up to expand it capabilities in the CRM and MDM spaces.

Looking Beyond the "Carrot and Stick" Model

"We take pride in admitting that our corporation operates beyond the conventional "carrot and stick" paradigm, investing on grooming and augmenting the leadership team to explore new growth opportunities and business sustainability for our clients,"says Kumar. AST nurtures the talents and skills of its workforce and drives it forward to lead and inspire the entire organization. As a cohesive team, they have learned to effectively overcome the frequent jolts caused by the volatility of business and the technology market. The rapid shift from the use of on-premise systems to cloud-based software is one of the most prominent trends witnessed by many companies today, regardless of their industry. Cloud solutions and many Software-as-a-Service-based offerings are replacing traditional business methodologies due to lower total cost of ownership and the ability to manage the complex business needs of large-scale customers. Unfortunately, only a handful of organizations comprehend the benefits of investing in business differentiators and productive improvement software such as BI Analytics and CRM, but remain comfortable with basic back-office automation and hardware improvements. "These companies are at risk of falling behind in the race," Kumar states. Alternatively, much-evolved business enterprises, such as AST, find rewards in embracing technologies that can improve customer experiences, as well as real-time analytics, to make important decisions.

Services that Ensure Companies Remain in the Race

"We are well-positioned to adapt to the latest technological transitions," affirms Kumar. AST's partnership with Oracle has helped the company bring cloud solutions to the market and avert many risks by decreasing capital expenditures, while enabling industry best practices. AST is an Oracle Platinum Partner and Pillar Partner for Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), BI, and Enterprise Performance Management (EPM). "Our solutions in the CRM space modernize interactions with solution users, monitor social media trends, and improve user experiences. Our BI and Analytics solutions help companies gain relevant insights to facilitate decision making," Kumar asserts. The company's largest and most active team skillfully delivers Oracle Cloud solutions, ERP, and Human Capital Management to Public Sector companies, while its BI and EPM teams work with customers to accomplish analytical excellence and enterprise-wide reporting goals.

"Our BI and EPM team has brought many accolades to the company for being an innovator of Oracle Planning & Budgeting Cloud Services in the North American Public Sector," adds Kumar. AST's award-winning Middleware team holds a track record of many large, successful projects. "One of our burgeoning practices is our group that focuses on Customer Relationship Management (CRM) that has developed many industry-specific solutions to improve customer experiences via modern tools for sales, social media, marketing, and service," Kumar says. On the whole, its solution offerings not only give AST a strong reason to be recognized, but also to speed up its implementation of cost-effective solutions and reduce inherent project risks.

AST's Oracle solutions have an immense reach, allowing them to partner with government agencies and companies across a myriad of industries and with an array of industry focuses. The company's deep knowledge and familiarity of its customers' industries is one of its core differentiators. Risk factors and prevention strategies devised by the firm have produced positive business results to each of its customers. For instance, the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority (GOAA) desired a centralized budget system to automate submittal and approval processes to reduce the planning cycle timeline and increase reporting and analytics capabilities for its budget team. In addition, the customer also sought to make its IT department a zero-capital model in order to curb IT support costs. AST presented GOAA with a SaaS-based Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Services (PBCS) solution to address the requirement, which provided GOAA a well-planned and modeled framework to connect its business models to financial outcomes. The solution, leveraged on an Oracle Essbase OLAP calculation engine, is able to process complicated calculations with enormous data volumes. Time and data intelligence features embedded in the service provided them out-of-the-box spreadsheets and aggregation skills. As a result, GOAA was able to achieve significant reduction in computing cost, increase efficiency, and improve service quality.

The Road Ahead

"There is no doubt that AST's success can be laid firmly at the feet of our employees. Most IT projects are made successful through the combined efforts and synergies of an entire team, all pulling their weight, to bring an initiative to completion," Kumar acclaims. In a highly competitive business environment, gaining a strategic advantage is imperative to the success of a company. AST's mantra of remaining receptive to customers' needs adds credence to its record of having a 100 percent successful project completion rate. "Since our conception, our aim has been about bringing each project in on-time and under-budget," says Kumar. With expansion plans in hand, the company is en route to widen its reach in new industry verticals such as life sciences and the financial services sector.
Twitter
Share on LinkedIn
facebook