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June - 2015 - issue > Cover Story
Techwave Consulting Simplicity in Enterprise-wide Software Applications
SI Team
Monday, June 1, 2015
The turgid nature of enterprise-wide software applications is in stark contrast to the organizations' need of simplicity and ease-of-use. The inability of such software applications to provide insights into organizational data pose a bigger challenge for business users as they have to do manual manipulation of data or integrate a third party Business Intelligence tools. The integrations escalate the expenditure of organizations, adding to the millions already spent on enterprise-wide software applications. This is where Techwave Consulting came in. Gummadapu brothers, Damodar and Raj, found Techwave Consulting to bring simplicity into the organizational environment by integrating business intelligence and data analytics and streamlining Enterprise Performance Management at a much cheaper price. The expertise that these Chartered Accountants brought forth placed Techwave Consulting among the leaders in the IT Services space.

"We are not just a technology company. We actually bring in the process excellence and functional expertise along with the technology," says Damodar Gummadapu, CEO of Techwave Consulting. "We help companies to visualize their global BI strategies, create those strategies, and implement, maintain, and support them as we go along. Our approach helps our customers to enhance their performance in the areas of Finance, Operations, Compliance, and Customer service. Our practices help our customers efficiently leverage Big Data, in-memory, mobility and cloud." Techwave takes IT and Business best practices and customizations them for their clients to provide mature and effective IT outcomes for business.

Taking the Road Less Travelled

Having previously worked with the likes of KPMG, Bearing Point, and Delloite, the duo decided to venture into IT Services domain in 2004, realizing the importance of analytics in the business setting. "There was emphasis on implementing ERP and big transaction systems, but little to no focus on analytics as a service offering," recalls Raj Gummadapu, SVP and COO of Techwave Consulting. "We started our company with dedicated focus in analytics, aimed at deriving value through the data and provide actionable insights to the organizations." Techwave has overcome the absence of proper analytics and reporting platform and established itself as a global system integrator providing end-to-end ERP implementation. Though the company is known for ERP implementation and support, the brothers emphasize on the fact that Techwave is still focused on providing BI, Analytics, and Enterprise Performance Management solutions.

Deft Visualization of Data

The biggest challenge, as Raj mentions, Techwave's clients face is lack accurate visualization of data. Based on the ever-changing needs of clients, Techwave helps clients to drive value through data harmonizing and visual intelligence even if their clients have complicated systems landscape and data is spread across various ERP systems. "Even though our clients put up a big data system, they need to have the capability to drive the insights from the data for the leadership at different level," explains Damodar. "Our experienced consultants know which tool and approach will fit into the organization at the right level. Also our partnership with various leading providers of analytical like Tableau is really helping our clients to reap very quick benefits of data visualization." In addition, Techwave's consultants train their clients in the tool and offer continuous support through offshore base for lowering TCO.

Case in point is one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies. Techwave enabled the pharma company's users in self-service reporting and gave a visual representation of their data. As their operations were situated across the globe, the client had enormous amount of data generated every day. "We were able to organize their entire BI system. We defined proper functionality, what kind of data should come from where, and provided strategy and roadmap, implemented that roadmap to make the users across the globe self sufficient with analytical capability using the global platform," explains Damodar.

Providing Valuable Insights using Analytics

Being a thought leader in providing analytics solutions, leveraging Big Data along with expertise in various BI tools, Techwave has created a niche market for itself. The Techwave team of BI experts has taken BI from a science to an art. The growing variety, velocity, and volume of data are streamed into scalable systems to identify underlining patterns and trends, delivering rich decision support solutions in highly granular visual formats."In the overall analytics platform and big data, we have been focusing on various initiatives," states Raj."We are helping our clients to migrate from generic and operational reporting to more of a straight application using the technology evolution that is happening today."

Techwave is working closely with their clients and educating them on how to take advantage and gain business value with the current technology. For a major wholesale distributor in Food Services, Techwave has been able to provide management insights across their data assets whether it is financial enterprise performance management or operational data, using the various new dimensions in technologies. "We are able to provide them a strategy, quick value in terms of gaining the insights and we have prepared them with a performance management platform that provides them the reporting platform for quick and real-time decision making," adds Raj.

The company has also enabled mobile applications for big data analytics for a mining firm. This gives the firm to connect to remote locations where the mining operations take place. "The decision makers are able to monitor activities at mining locations in real-time sitting at the operational headquarters. We have enabled the platforms to get the real-time analytics of proper functioning of equipments and to gain knowledge of whether the equipments are providing the right amount of efficiency or not," elucidates Raj.

"The coal industry is technologically challenged in terms of market conditions. But Techwave is able to bring the technology into the mining industry at a very rapid rate, and at a much simpler price. With the value that we are bringing, we are still keeping the TCO down and providing new solutions to our clients," remarks Damodar.

In Depth EPM Capabilities

Techwave specializes in implementation of EPM solutions for financial consolidations, Enterprise Planning, forecasting, strategic planning and annual planning solutions. "In these area we have pre-configured solutions that we go to our clients with, and a predefined methodology, IEPM (Integrated Enterprise Performance Management) that helps to implement our plans," Raj elaborates. The pre-considered solutions save lot of time and money in coming to the table, drawing it all away from the whiteboard to having a solution that already works. The clients' recommendations help Techwave to streamline their solutions. The unique thing about Techwave and EPM solutions is Techwave enable clear collaboration between the business and technology teams digressing from the traditional manner of business-driven EPM. "It actually mitigates the entire risk of the project because everybody is educated all the way along the project and they know what is expected out of that project," states Damodar.

Partnership with Giants

Since its inception, Techwave has worked in close partnership with SAP, who was also first among the giants to incorporate BI tools with its ERP solution. Naturally, the partnership with the thought leaders, Techwave Consulting, boosted the SAP ERP implementation success rate. Apart from SAP, Techwave has strong capabilities in Oracle OBIEE and Hyperion, SAP ERP, BPC and HANA, IBM's Cognos, and Microsoft Dynamics. "These partnerships enable us to explain our clients which particular tool(s) really fit their needs so that they can quickly generate the desired value of it, in a timely and cost-effective fashion," delineates CEO of Techwave. "We ensure that our client's investments are optimized through providing right strategy and implementation of technology platform that drives business value and ensures competitive advantage."

The partnership has also enabled Techwave to work with the visionary organizations in pioneering into new space such as HANA of SAP, Cloud-based offering from Microsoft and IBM. Techwave gets to use the new tools before it is even released, understands and tries to give a feedback. "Currently, we are partnering with SAP in Middle East in Real Estate solutions and even in treasury and financial management areas. We are helping them to co-develop and improve the REFX kind of solutions," adds Damodar. The partnership combined with the technical expertise and business understanding of the duo has enabled Techwave Consulting to become a go-to partner for many of the Fortune 500 companies, in just 11 years from its inception. Fortune Magazine has also added to the decoration of mantelpiece of Techwave Consulting by naming the company as Pennsylvania IT/Technology Leader.

Building on the accolades received, Techwave is looking forward to continue on the growth path by investing heavily in ISMAC (IoT, Social Media, Mobile, Analytics, and Cloud). In terms of geographic expansions, Techwave is looking to expand its services to Europe, Africa, and APAC region."Techwave's vision has always been making sure that we grow with the value we provide to our clients," concludes Raj.

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