Top 10 Beyond Quality and Management by beyond!

TOP 10 BEYOND QUALITY AND MANAGEMENT

BUSINESS

Issue 20 Winter 2018

COLLABORATING TOWARDS SUCCESS R. Mukund CEO & Founder Gensuite

The 21-Year-Old Entrepreneur Whose Inspiring Story Will Make You Cry Tears of Joy

The Secret to Star ng a Business Is Managing the Changes P.44

How improved data quality management helped Comic Relief boost fundraising campaigns P.50

P.42

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EDITOR’S CORNER

he term quality has been used for centuries, yet its definition differs from one perspective to another. It can be defined as a feature or as a characteristic, it can be defined as a grade of measurement or can even be said to be an indicator of expectations. To sum up, quality can be defined as something that helps determine how good or bad something is, or how fittingly it meets the standards of the customers’ expectations. Quality Management Systems stretches this term further into execution, as it is intended for the sole purpose of meeting the customer’s expectations through different products or services. QMS solution providers are ushering into a new era of qualitydriven products that are helping organizations across different industries to strive ahead of their competition and retain customer loyalty. Here at Beyond Exclamation, we hope to recognize and honor some of the leading providers in this domain through this annual issue titled “Top 10 Beyond Quality and Management Providers.” Featuring as the Cover Story of this issue, we have Gensuite, a Software as a Service (SaaS) provider of cloud-based compliance and management systems that helps global organizations, across a diverse array of industry segments, realize continuous improvement and excellence in their risk and compliance management programs. Aside from this, we have ComplianceQuest and Ubertesters, who are making a mark in the QMS industry with their innovative and efficient services and solutions. In addition to these, we have some of the most thought-provoking articles from various leading industry experts.

Editor in Chief CHRISTINE [editor@beyondexclamation.com]

Managing Editor JACK [jack@beyondexclamation.com]

Art Director VIJAYKUMAR [design@beyondexclamation.com]

Graphic Artist NICK [nick@beyondexclamation.com]

Project Manager JENNIFER [jennifer@beyondexclamation.com]

Development Manager JUSTIN [info@beyondexclamation.com]

Dive into the magazine and start scrolling through the journeys of these inspiring companies!

CONNECT!

Jack London

www.beyondexclamation.com BeyondExclamation @BeyondEx Beyond Exclamation beyondexclamation

In addition to our print magazine, we also provide relevant industry news and updates, as well as some thoughtprovoking articles and blogs on our website. Make sure to follow the same as we at Beyond Exclamation are looking forward to interact with our readers. Let’s connect on the web!

Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Inside... Business Boulevard

B E O N 10

Smart Solutions for Everyone

Omniscient Voyage

Mobile Testing Made Easier

How Strong Is Your Franchiseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Quality Control?

Excellence Causeway

20 4 Tactics to Sell Expensive Products

22 A Digitally Transforming Company

Newsmakers Locale

42 The 21-Year-Old Entrepreneur Whose Inspiring Story Will Make You Cry Tears of Joy

Younick Corner

Y D

28 The Quality Versus Quantity Debate in Community Building

DeďŹ nitive Destination

44 The Secret to Starting a Business Is Managing the Changes

50 How improved data quality management helped Comic Relief boost fundraising campaigns

R. Mukund CEO & Founder Gensuite

Collaborating Towards Success â&#x20AC;&#x153;Gensuite now offers applications developed together through 20 years of experience, passion, evolution, and community.â&#x20AC;?

t was back in the late 90s, when the Gensuite nucleus had originated by R Mukund, the CEO and Founder of the company. Mukund initiated the development of the web applications that are the core of Gensuite alongside EVP & Customer Development OďŹ&#x192;cer, Natasha Porter. Being a Software as a Service (SaaS) provider of cloud-based compliance and management systems, Gensuite helps global organizations, across a diverse array of industry segments, realize continuous improvement and excellence in their risk and compliance management programs. The company is designed by and for Environmental, Health & Safety (EHS) and Sustainability risk management professionals to help companies achieve business compliance and management systems excellence across all levels of their organizations. The integrated suite of web-based application modules enables crossfunctional support for EHS & Sustainability, Security/Crisis Management, Quality, Responsible Sourcing, Product Stewardship and Equipment Asset Management programs. Over the years, the additions of software development and IT professionals in 2001 (Jason Krueger, Vijay Alluru, Donavan Hornsby, Matt Bayuk, Andy Cox, Doug Martin, Mark Boehner, and

â&#x20AC;&#x153;From leading the way in mobile, to collaborating on the latest tech projects, Gensuite solutions stand out because we care and continuously innovate.â&#x20AC;?

“We are proud to offer solutions that are inspired by users and created for leaders like you.” Miki Yucel) have created a solid foundation for the company. Innovation Through Collaboration The energized and motivated foundational team of EHS and IT professionals at Gensuite were responsible for the systematic development, ﬁeld testing and deployment of over 60 applications between 2000-2010. They supported EHS, Security, Supplier Risk, Quality and Product Compliance leaders across all businesses of General Electric, as well as former businesses of GE, but stayed loyal to Gensuite applications. At ﬁrst this app suite was called GE PowerSuite but then rebranded to Gensuite in 2008. Back in 2010, Gensuite began developing teams across the world to support a global subscriber base. Naveen GV, former EH&S Manager at GE’s Technology Center in Bangalore, India joined the management team to initiate operations in India. The company has grown 20x since 2011 and continues to expand every single year. In 2018 alone, Gensuite welcomed 75 new companies to its

diverse subscriber community. Gensuite is passionate about backing the idea of innovation through collaboration. And the biggest achievements for the company have come from projects that it has collaborated with its subscribers to bring to life. One of the biggest achievements so far this year for Gensuite was the launch of Genny™, the industry’s first EHS virtual assistant powered by AI and the winner of the 2018 Cincinnati Business Courier Innovation & Technology Awards. “We work with leading, global organizations to deliver extraordinary value. Our diverse spectrum of partners work with us to build integrated, turnkey products and services for our customers, and theirs,” Mukund exclaims. Today, the Gensuite team consists of 350+ global team members all united by a common purpose – to enable subscribers to accomplish their business process objectives more efficiently, effectively, and collaboratively, while delivering value and performance excellence to their enterprise. Since 1997, Gensuite has earned

When we build together, we turn aspirations into reality. the trust of compliance leaders across diverse industries across the world. According to the company “We are most proud of our absolute commitment to customer service excellence, our 100% on-time launch record, 92% subscriber retention rate and our global Gensuite community!” Standing Apart from the Crowd Gensuite includes its subscribers in all research and development, inviting them to pilot new projects, welcoming product feedback and sharing subscriber participation on product development. “What sets Gensuite apart from other companies is that we are constantly evolving our suite of tools to give our subscribers the best in the industry. From the latest in cuttingedge mobile technology to powerful and insightful business analytics and Frontier Technologies such as Artiﬁcial Intelligence and wearables, Gensuite oﬀers some of the most technologically advanced capabilities in the industry,” mentions Mukund. Gensuite has team members across locations in the U.S., India, China, Mexico, Canada, Australia, France,

and the U.K. Together, Gensuite team members tackle challenges head-on and bring the best to the table. The Gensuite team offers services in hosting, maintenance, customization, implementation, training and strategy consulting to support their subscriber community—all backed by 20 years of domain experience and expertise in the industry. Delivering Quality at Every Step For Gensuite, enabling companies to manufacture high-quality products means offering Quality Management Software (QMS) that streamlines and improves policies, processes, and procedures to help companies produce superior products and achieve regulatory requirements associated with production. QMS goes right to an organization’s core business. These policies, processes, and procedures don’t appear out of thin air. Each organization establishes them as a way to ensure the effective delivery of high-quality products, services, or both to their customers — whoever they may be. A QMS also helps organizations meet regulatory requirements, depending on the

industry. In addition, quality management systems help organizations measure compliance with industry standards such as ISO 9001, AS9100, GMP, and TS that are known to evolve overtime. The way organizations actually design and implement their quality management systems may differ dramatically. Some rely on physical paperwork filed to cabinets. Others use spreadsheets and emails for documentation. In recent years, however, businesses large and small have turned to quality management software, such as Gensuite, to digitize and streamline the process. Spearheading From the Front Much of the success behind the company can be owed to the Founder and CEO, R Mukund, who is proven as an organizational leader with over 25 years of experience in progressive roles such as a technical professional, team leader, Six Sigma Master Black Belt, executive program manager, and most recently, as the Chief Executive Officer since 2008. He has a track record of distinction in diverse organizations from research & technology, consulting, corporate diversified & global, and cloud-based, tech-enabled services. His experience coupled with his grit and determination has proliferated the company towards success and he has shouldered each of the responsibilities with absolute

precision. His innovative bend of mind and technical knowhow has further helped ameliorate Gensuite as a leading solution provider in the Quality Management space. Speaking about the company, Mukund mentions “At Gensuite, we are driven by a singular mission – to partner with thought-leading champions to develop & deploy software solutions built on best practice business processes, oﬀer our platform with ﬂexible intelligent options and continuously evolve.”

A Continuous Path Towards Evolution Mukund exclaims “Our best ideas have always come from our subscriber community thinking collaboratively. We’ve worked diligently with our customers to develop the ﬁrst Frontier Technologies for EHS & Sustainability, and we are pleased to watch our shared ideas come to life!” In the coming years, its customers can expect bigger and better

solutions for their QMS and beyond, including its recent application interface re-design known as the App Recharge, enhanced functionality, and the introduction of new Frontier Technologies that can transform the way the community works. “Gensuite is inspired by our users, created for leaders like you, and our mission is to continuously evolve our software suite to make our users jobs easier,” Mukund concludes.

4 Tactics to Sell Expensive Products

hile the high-margin items are the ones that keep your company in the green, a lot of people in sales lack conﬁdence selling the most expensive items on the list.

Brian Ainsley Horn Author & Co-founder Authority Alchemy

To win these sales, you need to approach them a different way. A few things to keep in mind: 1. Be open-minded about your prospects Never write off a prospect or assume they are not going to open their wallets and spend. Even the most frugal people treat themselves now and then. And just because you’ve dealt with someone like this prospect before does not mean your future experiences will be the same. Also never phone it in, no matter how unlikely you think the sale is. Any prospect, approached in the right way, can turn into a profitable sale. 2. People will pay to have their problems solved Even those who are usually loathe to spend money will happily part with large amounts to solve their biggest problems. Your job is to find out what they need and to explain how your product can help. People tend to spend their money in the areas that give them the most value, so don’t get too caught up focusing on your product’s great features. Instead, talk in terms of the benefits that your product or service offers. For instance, if you sell cars, find out why your prospect is in your lot looking for a new vehicle. Usually, there is a life event that has triggered the desire to pick out a new ride. They may have a new child on the way. They may have an older car that is getting to the limits of its useful life. Or, they’ve taken up a hobby like jet skiing and need something that can tow their toys to the water every weekend. Once you know why they need a new vehicle, you can start suggesting the models that will address their problem the best.

3. Use positioning to nudge customers in the right direction Say you walk into a sporting goods store and there are three home-exercise machines on display. One is $3,200. It’s a sturdy elliptical machine with programmable workouts, a heart monitor, an LCD TV with video games on it and a few other bells and whistles. There’s also a really light weight barebones one for $300. The third has the heart monitor, the programmable workouts, a bookstand and seems to be pretty solidly built, all for $1,800. Chances are, you will gravitate toward the middle option. Often, the highest end option is not the one that the seller wants you to buy. But, by ﬁrst oﬀering

an option at an extremely high price, the slightly less expensive one seems that much more appealing and reasonable. You can do the same in your own business by creating super premium offerings and putting them up for sale at super premium prices. This creates a psychological push toward the item you really want to sell. 4. Don’t forget those upsells Even when selling a mid-range product, you can easily increase the total sale by offering a number of addon options. Accessories are a no brainer. Related products are another area that can yield additional profits.

If you are selling a high-end grill, a grilling tool kit with a spatula, tongs, a meat fork and a couple other items is an easy one to add on. Then, start taking about the pizza oven attachment, smoker and the zero-delay instant read thermometer. Once someone has the grill of their dreams on the way, convincing them to enhance the experience further is not difficult at all. Selling is not an adversarial game where either you or your prospect get one over on the other. Rather, it is a cooperative endeavor where you help them find the solution that will solve their problems and make them happy. Once you learn to approach each sale from this angle, you can increase your close rate and your profits.

Digitally Transforming

he recent years have seen rapid advancement in connectivity, mobility, analytics, scalability and big data – what we call the fourth Industrial revolution or Industry 4.0. This digital transformation in manufacturing has put increased focus for manufacturing and quality leaders for solutions like quality management at an enterpriselevel to improve time to market and bottom line eﬃciency. To take advantage of the latest and future technology advancement such as Artiﬁcial Intelligence, Smart Connectivity, Social Media and Collaboration throughout the entire product value chain ComplianceQuest was formed with a goal to adopt modern cloud architecture platform such as Salesforce.

Delivering best-in-class out-of-the-box solutions Today, ComplianceQuest provides a unified suite of applications in a single platform addressing quality management, manufacturing quality, supplier management, customer/field service quality and health & safety. Delivering best-in-class out-of-the-box solutions, ComplianceQuest fast-tracks an organization’s efficiency, safety and overall performance by combining enterprise quality and compliance with modern collaboration, communication and social media across the product value chain. Suitable for emerging growth companies and scalable and flexible to meet the needs of medium and global enterprises, ComplianceQuest is easy to implement, validate and use.

Building ComplianceQuest solutions on a modern cloud platform like Salesforce has distinct beneﬁts. The Salesforce platform architecture supports simplicity in implementation, scalability and reliability in management, and rapidity in developing and integrating enterprise-scale applications. Leveraging the Salesforce platform makes the ComplianceQuest solution secure, as it is compliant with ISO 27001, SOC 1-3, HIPAA, HITRUST, and GDPR and other common data security protection laws.*

Comprehensive breadth and depth of integrated solutions ComplianceQuest supports 12 core best practices driven solutions/processes out-of-the-box, integrated and ready to go. Unlike recently introduced cloud solutions, ComplianceQuest not only has a comprehensive breadth and depth of integrated solutions today but it’s also designed to scale to support the needs of small to global enterprises alike by redeﬁning what a next generate EQMS platform

Prashanth Rajendran CEO ComplianceQuest

and solution should be. Because ComplianceQuest is natively built on Salesforce, it leverages all the 100% modern cloud infrastructure and all the platform benefits including security, availability, reliability, and performance at scale. Keeping a pulse-point on the market ComplianceQuest’s innovation starts with the needs of customers that the company identifies during each of its implementations. This provides the primary priority and input to the company’s product roadmap planning beyond the goals and strategies from its corporate vision and partner relationships. ComplianceQuest also keeps a pulse-point on the market, industry specific requirements and regulations along with the Salesforce ecosystem. With this unique approach, companies are able to adopt a highly scalable ComplianceQuest platform to accommodate their immediate needs and as the requirements grow, provide companies the ability to grow with the application suite and the platform. ComplianceQuest can also integrate its solution suite with traditional enterprise software solutions including ERP, MES, CRM and HR systems expanding its performance strength of quality and compliance aspects across the entire supply chain. In addition,

ComplianceQuest has abilities through Salesforce for communication and collaboration through Chatter, social media like and follow, Community Cloud to include exchange of data/documents from a company’s external partners, support for mobility, artiﬁcial intelligence through Einstein Analytics and already comes with pre-validated solutions for Life Sciences customers. The rich experience of leadership team is always an advantage The ComplianceQuest leadership team is rooted in the Enterprise Quality Management System (EQMS) market with over 25 years’ experience in quality, compliance, document management, issue tracking, eLearning and more. Having built quality and compliance solutions before, ComplianceQuest hit the ground running as it began marketing and selling its solution into the manufacturing and life sciences industry. ComplianceQuest was able to develop the fastest growing, 100% modern cloud-based Enterprise Quality Management System (EQMS) on the Salesforce® platform. Since its inception, ComplianceQuest has already quadrupled in size (as of 2018) with clients from all over the world. ComplianceQuest’s impressive list of customers includes small, medium to large life sciences as well as a diversiﬁed list

of manufacturing clients from aerospace & defense, automotive, consumer goods, and hi-tech companies. The frontrunner building relationship and delivering on commitments Prashanth Rajendran is the CEO of ComplianceQuest. Clients appreciate his flair for knowing and understanding customers’ pain, his knack to communicate a solution, and the depth of his “real world” executive and industry experience. As CEO, Prashanth directly oversees ComplianceQuest’s sales, marketing, partnerships, finance, IT, legal and overall company strategy and direction. He comes to the company with more than twenty-five years’ experience in manufacturing, engineering and quality. Prashanth has repeatedly produced sustained revenue and EBITDA growth in dynamic and changing markets. He has extensive experience with process automation, which requires a deep understanding of critical business drivers in multiple industries. He’s highly successful in building relationships, seizing control of critical problem areas, and delivering on customer commitments. His background includes being President and CEO of Lattice Social, a cutting-edge software company for incorporating social media into business-to-business

company. Prior to this, he held a variety of positions in Manufacturing Engineering. Prashanth currently serves on several Boards fostering entrepreneurship in the Tampa Bay area.

Why ComplianceQuest? Ÿ Fastest growing native

Vision that makes keep going

Salesforce based EQMS solution

ComplianceQuest’s journey is steadfast in its belief of Salesforce platform and ecosystem as a strong foundation for continuing to develop and deliver future innovative solutions and seeing rapid growth globally. Salesforce itself is also becoming a more standard platform within many companies and hence IT is looking at other Salesforce apps available to extend the value of their investment and reduce overall IT footprint. This modern cloud experience means a reduction in management of modular licenses and versions and simplifies IT issues surrounding software management. Using the cloud, customers will always have the most updated version of the software platform. In addition, since the business application platform is continuously innovated and managed by Salesforce, it allows ComplianceQuest to drive more innovation into its own solutions. Because of the ease of development, ComplianceQuest can quickly create fully working prototypes, new features or customer specific capabilities to address new market or customer requirements and turn them into final production solutions.

Ÿ Worry-free infrastructure

platform - available anywhere, anytime Ÿ Reliable, versatile and scalable

for all size companies Ÿ Single platform built by quality

and compliance experts Ÿ Flexible and tailorable to meet

customer and industry requirements Ÿ Built-in best practices and

seamless processes with Salesforce and AppExchange solutions Ÿ Rapid time to value by quickly

ComplianceQuest will continue its approach to develop solutions, incorporate the best practices from various industries, support ever changing customer business needs, enable visibility of key business indicators, and highly intuitive to enable easy adoption by various levels of customer stakeholders. With continued passion and dedication on this journey, ComplianceQuest will become a market and competitive disruption.

getting up and running in weeks Ÿ Priced reasonably and

delivering incredible value for money! collaboration, more than twenty years as cofounder and COO of Pilgrim Software, a Quality Management System software company. He grew the organization from inception to goal of successfully selling the

* See Salesforce Compliance at https://trust.salesforce.em/compliance

Harsh Snehanshu Co-founder & CEO YourQuote

Truths of Scale: The Quality Versus Quantity Debate in Community Building hen we started YourQuote, we invited 40–50 of the best writers from our network and kept the app invite-only. The idea was to limit the influx of mediocre writers and build a community that was quality-driven more than quantity. It, however, stalled our growth and increased our churn and even the good writers who were there on the app couldn’t see the network effect kicking in because of limited number of writers. (Network effect implies organic social interactions taking place between users within a digital product. Needs a critical mass of users to kick in.)

(Dribbble is a niche invite-only networking platform for designers) or the Instagram for Writers (Instagram is an open mass-market photo-app). Two months of trials and errors later, we realized a fundamental mistake in our invite-only approach. By being exclusive, we were limiting the virality of our inherently viral idea. In Chamath Palihapitiya’s words, we failed to make 90% of our users say “wow” within 1 minute of their joining. The invite-only barrier was huge. The uninvited users had to ﬁll a form, wait for 6 hours and we would send them a code, with which they would login. Half of them would run away at the sheer sight of the form.

Unclear Initial Vision

The most surprising facet of this invite-only experiment was that even after following those steps, we found some of the writers posting plagiarized, spam and mediocre ﬂuﬀ on our app. Our expectation

When we started out, we were confused ourselves as to whether make YourQuote the Dribbble for Writers

that the quality would be out of this world because of being invite-only was sadly unfulfilled. However, a few writers did write content that was spellbinding. As a platform, we didn’t want to moderate content before the user posted and expected the community to weed out lame shit, but the community was more docile at that time. The problem with writing is its subjectivity and even a brilliant writer might not be able to pull off brilliance all the time. There will be some ordinary stuff scribbled from their pen. After much deliberation for 2 months, we removed the inviteonly feature and made the app open for all. Anyone could login and post their writings without a second thought. Just like Instagram. It skyrocketed our growth. Although initially it pulled down our overall quality, soon the network effects kicked in and writers started advising each other on grammar, punctuation and sentence structuring to make each other’s writings flawless. Currently, social interactions have reached an all time high. Facebook & Whatsapp groups have been formed with a truly family feel. A culture that values original content has been created. The Refined Vision We now realize that the more ambitious and disruptive aim for us will be to become the Instagram for writers, not Dribbble as there is a

huge vacant space when it comes to an addictive mobile writing app and our idea and branding suits the mass use case with the mass market. We haven’t constrained our users to any one form of writing and the word “quote” is a goldmine. For YourQuote, we are not thinking in terms of a million users or tens of million, but rather 500 million users who like to read and write. It’s better to target a large market of over 50,000,000 amateur writers rather than 50,000 professional ones, providing them with both opportunity to become better and get published. Publishers become exclusive, not platforms. What About The Elites? During the process, to uplift the quality, we invited a lot of famous writers, even some professional ones to try out our platform. Some of them were too elitist to respond. Some joined, saw some mediocre fluff and ran off. This worried us initially, but now it does not. It is but natural.

diﬃcult it would get for me to become discoverable and attain followers. However, we elitists are stupid and cynical. What if the company shuts down? You never know.

Being a published novelist myself, I am a closet elitist. I would have pretty much done the same on an app with 1k, 5k or 10k downloads. I would have taken it seriously only if there were 100k, 1 million or better still 10 million downloads, a number that is bigger than my social media reach of 30k odd users. This would have been stupid of me because the more the number of people on the app, the more

During our experiments, we realized that great content creators thrive on appreciation and marketability of their content. Even though Vimeo has niche and quality content-creators, majority of the proliﬁc ones are on YouTube because that’s where the audience—both brilliant and mediocre—is. Including even the best of content creators. Be it John Oliver or TVF. Because it’s easier

for quality content creators to build their following, they wait for the network to become bigger and more marketable being joining them. Psychologically it seems convincing for them. At YourQuote, we have come to a diﬃcult decision (despite our closet elitist outlook): to create a product of scale, we need to focus on quantity over quality. Once the quantity comes in, automatically high quality writers will join. It becomes a marketing avenue for them. Being Instagram-like, it doesn’t really concern us because mediocre writers won’t garner as many followers and would be

difficult to find. True, we will lose out on some great writers who use blogs or Facebook to broadcast their writings right now, but we are looking not at 10000 or 100,000 writers writing on our app, but the 500 million people from across the globe. When you see that scale, you realize that phenomenally brilliant writers are statistically insignificant (less than 50,000) in number and they can be tempted later. Instagram Case Study A similar thing happened with Instagram when it launched. Because Instagram turned a lot of amateurs think of themselves as

photographers, it pissed a lot of professional photographers oﬀ for a long time initially. They preferred posting their pictures on clunkier web-products like Flickr or Eyefetch. However, the growth of Instagram created a rare FOMO (fear of missing out) especially when they already had a stunning portfolio ready and gettyimages and stockphotos started shortlisting and licensing pictures posted by Instagram’s users. It would have been a loss for them if they didn’t. Once they did, the sheer social marketing aspect hooked them in.

Mobile Testing Made Easier

can ﬁnd the right solution with Ubertesters to help them launch their product with conﬁdence.

bertesters is the leading global provider of a cloud-based, process management tool for mobile applications beta testing to ensure an accurate, fast and cost effective mobile testing process that results in high quality, flawless, mobile app. Founded in 2013, the company offers a complete, end-to-end, software testing solution for digital products to help organizations beta test their digital products prior to launching it.

The company today helps hundreds of organizations from around the world to beta test their digital products. Some of its clients include HPE, JCPenny, Zalando, Akamai, 888 Casino, IDT Telecom, Taboola, GE Capital (Synchrony ﬁnancial), GE Digital, NetEase, MyHeritage, MidWeast tapes, and many others. The beginning

The holistic solution includes: a SaaS product - a robust platform to manage the entire mobile beta testing process and teams; a crowd testing service of global, professional testers for hire with devices, for most flexible and cost effective global testing under real-life conditions; and offshore outsourcing services of QA experts based in the company’s East European facilities. Thus, any organization in a need for beta testing

It all started when the founders, Ran Rachlin and Alexey Chalimov realized that mobile apps will soon become more dominant than web. Prior to this realization, Alexey was the CEO of Gettaxi, a global on-demand taxi service and they had a major challenge managing and getting appropriate feedback from their own global QA team. Therefore, the duo ﬁgured that the huge

Ran Rachlin Co-founder & CEO Ubertesters

diversity of devices/geographies will create a major need for a mobile beta test management platform and decided to create the most robust and comprehensive tool in the market, and this is how Ubertesters was born. The present Ubertesters is the only company to offer a QA testing solution for the entire development cycle (from the early stages of engineering to the product launch). Also, the solution addresses both pains that digital development companies face: Resources (crowd of global testers on demand or offshore outsourcing of QA experts) and Tools (a robust platform to manage the entire mobile testing process and internal QA teams. The Ubertesters platform offers much more than crash reporter. It’s a full robust QA management platform offers everything that the VP Engineering needs in order to manager and control the mobile beta testing process. And then, in addition to the platform, Ubertesters also offers a crowd of experienced, global, professional testers with devices to help companies test the app in a real profound way prior to launching it. Lastly, if the clients wish to have a dedicated team of QA experts working for them on a full-time basis, they can use Ubertesters’s

offshore outsourcing services and get a dedicated QA team that is fully familiar with the product and can run all types of full regression or sanity testing on an on-going basis. With Ubertesters, the entire testing process can be managed using one dashboard and one provider. While the competition offers a solution only for some of the steps along the way. The talented team that works day and night At present, Ubertesters has three global locations; USA (sales office), Tel-Aviv (Headquarters), and Ukraine (engineering and development). The most important part of the team is the very talented and innovative engineering team that works day and night to bring new unique features to the market. The great effort of the engineering team makes sure that the company’s QA management tool remains the most robust, comprehensive and user friendly out there. The building blocks of the company are built first on a well thought mission statement and mission. The company’s mission is to “Help digital organizations launch better, well-tested, bug-free products by enhancing natural best testing practices while provide exceptional customer services”. In addition, there are core values that put the client in the center by integrating honesty, integrity and transparency in all aspects of Ubertesters’s business.

The moment when it all felt worthwhile Ran proudly says that their hard work has paid oﬀ with HPE choosing Ubertesters platform to make part of the HPE Mobile center solution. HPE realized that the Ubertesters solution is the most robust and comprehensive mobile beta testing solution in the market and the best way to manage large team of QA testers (both in-house and remote). “We worked on an integration partnership and the Ubertesters platform became part of the HPE mobile center. Being chosen by such a large company that specializes in quality assurance and serving hundreds of large enterprises was a major success for the Ubertesters team and major feeling of achievement,” Ran asserts. Ran believes the industry buzz and trends is all about testing automation. “I strongly believe that automation can’t replace manual testing and the need to test on real devices, with real people under real-life conditions. Ubertesters’ focus on manual testing, and the ability to manage the entire testing life cycle with its product and services is our main beneﬁt over the competition,” Ran says. Beyond creativity, invention and innovation Going ahead, Ubertesters will continue to grow through creativity,

invention and innovation. “We will continue to put the ‘voice of the customer’ in the center, listen to our customer’s needs and add new exciting features to our QA management platform. In addition, we will continue to enlarge our community of global QA testers to allow our crowd testing services to serve clients all around the world while making sure our testers can earn money in their free time,” Ran concludes.

Why Ubertesters? Ÿ Ensures an accurate, fast and

cost eﬀective mobile testing process that results in high quality, ﬂawless, mobile app

A unique leader with massive global experience Ran has massive global experience, managing and leading new initiatives from inception to implementation and significant sales as well as managing large global organizations in different countries. Before starting Ubertesters, Ran held several high-profile management roles in General Engineers (The Israeli distributor of GE), Mul-TLock, and Silicom Inc (NASDAQ: SILC). Ran brings his experience in management and sales to the company and acts as a mentor to the team on their way to success. Ran is a speaker in several industry events and is known for his unique view of the QA and testing world.

Ÿ Brings the power of a

superior beta testing process to every business in the app development ecosystem Ÿ Empowers mobile

developers, project managers and testers by providing them with a comprehensive, easy to use beta testing management tool

For more information, visit https://ubertesters.com/

Ÿ Extremely aﬀordable

platform allowing businesses to use the tool for their complete test cycle Ÿ Gives access to crowd-

sourced Ubertesters' team of qualiﬁed and experienced testers for on-demand, shortterm testing projects to complement their own QA team

How Strong Is Your Franchise’s Quality Control?

Mark Siebert CEO The iFranchise Group

or decades, franchisors have pretty much used the same system of quality control. They’d start with several weeks of initial training, provide the franchisee with an operations manual, and sprinkle in occasional ﬁeld visits and some ongoing training. But today, with the advent of Learning Management Systems (LMS) technologies, virtually every franchisor can develop an online training and quality control program for his business without breaking the bank.

If It’s Not Broke, Break It! For any franchisors looking to upgrade, the question comes down to “Why make the change?” After all, traditional methods of quality control have been used for years without a hitch. And even the least expensive LMS comes with a development and maintenance fee. Perhaps the most signiﬁcant advantage of an LMS is the ease by which content can be customized, based on either individual users or groups of users. This unique system enables franchisors to push personalized training to every level of employee in their organization. This allows franchisors, for the ﬁrst time, to be directly involved in the quality control and training of every person who represents their brand--even for positions where employee turnover exceeds 100 percent annually. No longer is a franchisor’s only option to “train the trainer.” Today, video, supplemented by online testing, can improve quality control

Intranets, of course, have long been a staple of the franchise community, providing a forum for both training and monitored internal communications. But an LMS can provide more robust features than a franchisor’s traditional intranet. In addition to housing operations manuals, an LMS can oﬀer access to training materials, training videos and tests that will allow your franchisees to better replicate your unique system.

throughout the organization. Some franchisors are even training crewlevel staff via podcasts and other remote media devices that connect directly to the LMS. An LMS can also help reduce costs for both the franchisor and their franchisees simultaneously. Franchisees attending initial, in-person training sessions will be able to come into these sessions “pre-trained,” having first used the LMS to familiarize themselves with the franchisor’s system, thus shortening the in-person training program and reducing its associated expenses. And the opportunities for instantaneous training--either first-time or refresher-are enormous. Employee got a problem installing a widget? With a few keystrokes and the right password, that person can watch a video on the subject without missing a beat. Need to be sure the cook your franchisee hired last week knows how to prepare your special recipe? A video and interactive test can help ensure consistency. In addition to training employees, an LMS has profound implications for the introduction of new products and services. An LMS allows you to provide detailed information on new product or service offerings immediately across a wide audience while ensuring that it’s being done according to your specifications, because it’s both instantaneous and auditable. All This, and Legal Benefits, Too An LMS offers the additional advantage of allowing franchisors to track all activity that occurs on their sites. For instance, a franchisor can now tell how long a specific video was watched on an employee-by-employee basis. Franchisors can also track

completed tasks, such as what courses remain untaken. The LMS can even send reminders to the user, the franchisee and the franchisor that certain required tasks remain uncompleted. With an LMS in place, franchisors can require that certain tasks be completed in a predetermined order (for instance, that an employee must take the safety course before the operations course) and that tests covering that material must be passed before the employee is allowed to move on. And by documenting that their franchisees and employees were trained, franchisors may be in a better position to enforce quality control provisions in their contracts with their franchisees. Another critical element of installing an LMS? By documenting the completion of specific training tasks and their results, franchisors may be able to avoid certain liability issues. If, for instance, an employee is charged with sexual harassment, as the franchisor you can prove that specific employee read the appropriate passages in your operations manual and watched the video on the subject. You can also prove, by the test results generated by the LMS, that he understood both the content of that material and your position on the issue. Job safety concerns? Again, the ability to document what you’ve done to prepare for these issues can have a significant impact. And the ability to prove that you’ve provided training on these issues can significantly reduce your legal exposure should an issue ever arise. Cost Benefit Analysis The bottom line is that everything in business has an associated expense and must be subjected to a cost benefit analysis before you can decide whether

to proceed. So just what will an LMS program that automates much of the training process cost you? Your initial investment could be as low as $10,000 for a high-end system that also includes some custom programming, positioning of content and test development. Compare that with the associated costs of in-person training, both initially and ongoing, for your franchisees and their employees, and you’ll ﬁnd an investment in an LMS may well be worth it. Of course, in addition to these initial development costs, there are ongoing software, service and support fees, as is typical with all high-end software programs. These fees, which are charged on a per-user basis, generally decrease as the number of users increases--the bigger you get, the less you’ll pay per user. And savvy franchisors will often include provisions in their contracts that make their franchisees responsible for the payment of any such ongoing license fees. Ultimately, while the startup and ongoing fees for an LMS aren’t inexpensive, they are relatively low when viewed in terms of their beneﬁts-improved branding and consistency and reduced training costs. And if an LMS can mitigate potential lawsuits-and their expenses--by providing a “proof of training” safety net, the costs of an LMS can be downright cheap by comparison.

The 21-Year-Old Entrepreneur Whose Inspiring Story Will Make You Cry Tears of Joy

Larry Kim CEO MobileMonkey

hen it comes to the en trepreneurship, most people focus on how they can grow a business. But, the reasons why a person should start a company don’t get nearly enough attention, particularly how powerful (albeit, a bit crazy) starting a business can be.

truck, and it “seemed like a good idea.” But, they identiﬁed a problem. According to John, “Both of us can’t cook.” The third concept was the winner, John and Mark’s unicorn of an idea was to sell socks because John had worn “crazy socks my entire life.” John believed it would be fun and creative, and the pair decided to give it a whirl.

Entrepreneurship has the ability to unlock human potential, no matter what type of entrepreneur you happen to be. It allows people to craft their destinies by ﬁnding meaningful work that doesn’t just help themselves, but others as well.

John’s Crazy Socks Takes Oﬀ During 2017, John’s Crazy Socks pulled in $1.75 million in gross sales, representing 42,710 separate orders. The online store sells 1,500 diﬀerent kinds of socks, giving shoppers a lot of options from which to choose. Their inventory includes colorful variants of classic shapes including noshow, ankle, crew, knee high, and above the knee socks.

John Cronin, a 21-year-old entrepreneur who is the mind behind John’s Crazy Socks, a million+ dollar business focused on making fun, creative, and colorful socks available to the masses. And he doesn’t let anything stop him from reaching for success, including Down’s Syndrome.

Plus, John had a knack for making the customer’s feel special. He includes sweet treats and a thank you note with every order that heads out the door. And, for shopper’s in Long Island, John will even deliver the socks in person.

Founding a Company John and his father, Mark X. Cronin, are co-founders of John’s Crazy Socks. The company operates online, though is physically based in Long Island, New York.

The pair attribute much of their growth to positive word-ofmouth as well as a strong presence on social media. Additionally, many people identify with the story, and they have been fortunate to receive substantial media coverage, leading to signiﬁcant sales increases.

After his birth, John was diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome. He worked diligently throughout his life and, upon graduating from high school, decided he wanted to start a company with his dad.

John’s Crazy Socks also now employs a dozen full-time staﬀ members, eight of which have some form of diagnosed disability.

As they began discussing the prospect, John’s ﬁrst idea was a “fun store,” though the pair never quite worked out what that would be.

“It’s imperative to hire people with disabilities, and not simply because it seems the right thing to do,” Mark stated. “Employers complain that they can’t ﬁnd enough workers and here is an untapped pool of excellent labor. We look at

Then, they considered a food truck because John and Mark had seen a movie about a father and son operating a food

what people can do and match our business to their skill set and we are better oﬀ because of it.” “I don’t think we are doing groundbreaking work,” said Mark. “We are giving our employees an opportunity. We have seen tremendous growth because we give them an opportunity.” Giving Back to the Community The company also works to support the larger community. First, 5 percent of their proﬁts going to the Special Olympics. Also, John creates “awareness socks” as a method for raising money for a range of charities. Giving back is a core principle for the company, and is at least partially responsible for their relatively quick success. When speaking about his diagnosis during an interview, John said, “Down’s Syndrome never holds me back.” A Mission to Believe In John believes the company is “spreading happiness through socks,” a simple mission that is easy to get behind. They give people a method for expressing themselves with greater ease, and in a way that works for many buyers’ lifestyles. (Hey, even Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada known for attending events in colorful socks, has a few pairs of John’s Crazy Socks). Mark stated, “We both are absolutely committed to the vision we have. And we both know we need each other. I couldn’t do this without John. You probably couldn’t do it without me, right?” “Right, dad.” “And we’re having fun. We’re spreading happiness. What’s better than that?” Mark adds.

What You Can Learn from John’s Crazy Socks John and Mark’s success can teach a lot of entrepreneurs, and aspiring entrepreneurs, a thing or two about business. First and foremost, they found a product and a vision they believe in wholeheartedly, showing just how valuable passion can be when it comes to achieving success. Even in the face of what many would consider adversity, John doesn’t let Down’s Syndrome stop him from reaching his goals and spreading joy to everyone who decides to visit the shop or buy some socks for themselves or others. John participates fully in the business, doing a wide range of tasks from creating “thank you” videos to working as a “sock wrangler” (their title for those who help pick and pack orders) to giving tours and promoting the business. He also attended a business acceleration program where he learned about presenting, networking, and how to interact with customers. Second, the company focuses on creating opportunities for others, giving back to the community, and treating their customers like gold, all of which help propel them forward. John’s Crazy Socks has an enviable company culture, one that is certainly worthy of being mirrored by other entrepreneurs, including fun activities like staﬀ lunches on Fridays. “We had this mission to spread happiness and that has to start here,” said Mark. “So, it’s important hat this is a great place to work.” Plus, John’s Crazy Socks is determined to succeed, crafting a strong online presence through their website and social media, demonstrating that they also have the marketing chops to make it happen.

Final Takeaways Discussing his takeaways from his experience starting John’s Crazy Socks, Mark shared, “It’s not enough to simply to sell a product. We are creating meaning and experience around that product. For us, we have a retail mission and a social mission and those are indivisible. If we only had the retail mission we wouldn’t be doing to business we are doing. If we only had the social mission, it wouldn’t mean as much. People don’t just buy socks from us. They tap into our mission of happiness and into the giving back that we do.” He also added, when it comes to starting a business, his biggest advice is to “just do it.” “We chose not to spend time to research and do a lot of planning. We decided to test a viable product and tinker with it, using customer feedback to guide us.” He also recommended that parents of kids with diagnoses like Down’s Syndrome shouldn’t settle. “John is the youngest of three boys, and you try to do the same things as a parent when you raise your children. We promote independence and raise the expectations of what’s possible,” said Mark. He added, “There are more options when you leave school, like starting a business. We, as parents, sometimes we shelter our children too much. If we can let them go and be willing to let them try things, they’ll surprise us. I look at John and he shows up every day, on time and ready to work. He is focused, he works hard. He’s diligent and pays attention to details.” Ultimately, John and Mark created something special, a unicorn of a sock business that brings smiles to the faces of thousands of shoppers today, and likely many, many more in the future.

Mark Asquith Small Business Specialist & Founder Excellence Expected

The Secret to Starting a Business Is Managing the Changes

tarting something, whether it’s a new business, product or service, exercise or morning routine is exciting, motivating and comes with a healthy dose of vision, too. These are the things that get us through the first week, the first two weeks, the first month and so on.

But things can get hard. We face challenges that run the risk of derailing us. I’ve certainly experienced that in my own business, especially considering that my entire marketing structure is based on content. Getting derailed is easy when you see fluctuations in traffic or receive negative comments, for example. And sometimes, we simply lose focus because we feel like the challenge that we set ourselves is simply too much. We realize maybe we bit off more than we can chew. Everyone has expected these feelings at some point. When it comes to starting your own business, creating a new product or trying to diversify your product range, these kinds of feelings can have a serious, tangible effect on your actual, real-life cash flow too. The great thing is there are so many tactics and strategies that you can use to stay on track, but when we consider the notion of "starting" something, we’re often viewing that from the perspective of stopping or certainly winding down, something else. Let’s use the example of starting your first business. Typically that business started out as a side project, or something happened that forced you out of your previous job and caused you to decide to start something for yourself instead of finding another similar position elsewhere. The bottom line is, starting your first business is a different rhythm to what you’ve been doing, usually.

It’s an entirely diﬀerent draw on your time, requires you to be focused and motivated, self-initiated and accountable to yourself. And this is where problems can start. This is when the overwhelming feelings can set in. The secret to starting: Finding your pace of change. Change is something that we should all embrace. But the truth is that we can’t all embrace change in the same way, with the same processes and outcomes. Change can be hard. When considering a switch into self-employment, change can be even tougher. You have a myriad of things to worry about: · ·

Covering your bills Finding out exactly what it is you want to do

· · · ·

For whom you will do it Logistics of delivering it Where to work from How to attract customers

The list is endless. Change is a great thing, but it brings with it a whole range of new challenges, challenges that you simply may not appreciate or be ready for. The secret to progressing through a period of change -- namely starting your own business -- when things appear insurmountable is to identify your own "pace of change.” What is "pace of change?" Sadly, many new business owners give up too soon because the level of

Habits are hard to break and equally, new habits take a time to form. Don’t forget that when you start your ﬁrst business. You simply haven’t done this before and thus, you’re experiencing not only a ﬁnancial change, but a cultural one too. Be mindful of your body, and listen to what your mind is telling you. Trust your gut instinct, and allow yourself to accept the change gradually. The key lies in prioritizing what needs doing versus what you can actually accept as part of your new routine. Your responsibility is to carry out tasks, every single day, that move the needle in your business. Those tasks should come before anything else. If you’re too focused on being the ultimate entrepreneur and emulating the success that you see online from people who have been doing it for years, then you will create a pace of change that is simply too fast for you. Likewise, if you try to accelerate towards your vision too quickly, you could again force a pace of change that you’re not comfortable with.

change that they experience during those ﬁrst few weeks and months simply becomes too much for them. Just like diving back into a gym routine and expecting to lift the same amount of weight as you did when you were at your peak will feel impossible to start with, expecting to begin a new business, create your own personal routine within your business, and identify the tasks you need to accomplish every single day to keep that business moving forward will feel uncomfortable. But discomfort is to be embraced, learned from and worked through. The real issue isn’t the discomfort at all. The real issue is that we easily compare ourselves to those around us,

those we see online and anyone else, frankly, who we feel are "better" than us. As so, we become frustrated by the progress that we are, or aren’t, making. But rather than assess progress against our own previous milestones, we assess it against the perceived success of everyone else. The result of this is that we force ourselves into a pace of change that can be too fast for us. Everyone approaches change at their own pace. The secret to maintaining some early stage sanity and focus is to realize what your pace of change is. How much can you embrace before you feel overwhelmed? Where is your line? How much change can you take before you start to revert back to your default, “employed” behavior?

There’s a difference between being motivated, driven and results oriented and trying to do too much, too soon. Your pace of change is the speed at which you can embrace your new routines, new approaches and processes while still being focused on creating and measuring results. This balancing act is key in the early days of your first business, and without it, one side will take over. You will focus fully on results and realize that you let the backend of your business slip, only to watch it push you into burnout, or you will focus entirely on the “feel good” work on the backend of your business, not separating what you need to do from what you like doing. You’ll find yourself left with no cash in the bank, really quickly.

How improved data quality management helped Comic Relief boost fundraising campaigns

Yves Mulkers Founder 7wData

relationship with fundraisers by improving its CRM processes to ultimately increase its fundraising potential.

he charity sector has been undergoing a public trust crisis in the past few years, with direct fund raising techniques part of the concern. According to the latest ďŹ gures from the Charity Commission, trust in charities is at its lowest point since the Commission started asking about it back in 2005, with public trust dropping to 5.7 out of 10, down from 6.7 this time last year.

By streamlining multiple sources to one accurate, enriched source of data, Comic Relief has created a consistent and sustainable single view of its dedicated team of fundraises, resulting in more participants and more funds raised in its Red Nose Day and Sport Relief events.

As anyone involved in direct marketing of any description will know, data is the bedrock of a successful campaign that treats prospects, fundraisers or donors with respect.

For Comic Relief, the data improvement programme was all about better understanding who its fundraisers are, where they are, what activity they undertake to support the charity and therefore how best to communicate with them around each major campaign.

We recently worked closely with Comic Relief as it undertook a major project to further strengthen its

The more relevant and empowering the communications from Comic Relief the more eﬀective its fundraisers can be, all focused on raising more funds to address poverty and social injustice. It’s not everyday we at Trillium have the honour of improving data that matters quite this much. How did they start? The starting point for Comic Relief was gaining a single-view of fundraisers by proﬁling its data records to identify potential duplicate records, which were subsequently merged and combined. After all, it’s not at all uncommon for John Smith to be the same person as Jon Smith in a database. This meant that Comic Relief could maintain a single record of communication with each individual and therefore tailor its future communications. Yemi Okunade, head of data at Comic Relief, describes the programme as having helped the organisation to communicate in a more human way. “Our data quality programme has created a robust business case for us to invest in data, not least because we know that we can accurately thank fundraisers for their extremely valuable contribution to Comic Relief and help them raise as much money as possible,” he said.

Rapid data engagement Initially we worked with Yemi’s team on a 15-day collaborative ‘rapid data engagement’ on a sample of its data, followed by a data improvement exercise. For this our team used data quality solutions, deployed in the cloud, to analyse relationships within the data and rectify errors such as gender conflicts, duplicate records or misfielded information. Such initial data assessments are a common way our teams begin working with clients - it isn’t until you actually uncover the scale of errors within a database that you can start defining a plan of action to clean it up. The data quality programme detected and rectified duplicate records, standardised telephone number formats and improved over 40,000 address records.

This work translated into an enhanced ability to understand specifically who Comic Relief’s fundraisers are. The automation of the previously manual data quality processing was calculated to have saved the charity 65 full-time equivalent days, efficiencies that translate directly into the ability to make larger grants to its supported causes. The next stage for Trillium and Comic Relief is the construction of a single customer view for its fundraisers of Red Nose Day in the US. The good news is that thanks to advances in IT, such as cloud computing, it is now possible for any organisation, no matter how large, to significantly improve the quality of its data within 90 days. There really is no excuse to be sitting on a data liability.

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