Clearwater Analytics Marks First Year of Business Operations in India, Continues to Ramp Hiring for Development Talent

Clearwater Analytics, a global SaaS provider of investment accounting and reporting, is celebrating one year of business operations at the Delhi-NCR office. The company has continued to grow globally during these challenging times and plans to add to its product development talent for its India-based teams.  

Established in August 2019, the Delhi-NCR site is part of Clearwater’s operations and development centre network, with offices also in Boise Idaho, USA; Edinburgh, Scotland; and Seattle, Washington, USA. The centre plays a strategic role for Clearwater from the Asia Pacific region with access to a strong talent market and the ability to provide follow-the-sun servicing capabilities.

Clearwater has continued to add clients and hire employees worldwide during a year marked by a public health crisis and a sudden shift to a work-from-home model. The Delhi-NCR office met its original growth target and plans to double that headcount by year-end 2020.

“As we mark our first year operating in India, we are thrilled about the advances made by our talented team of professionals in Delhi-NCR and the significant contributions they have already made to Clearwater’s technology, servicing expertise, and culture in general,” said Sandeep Sahai, Chief Executive Officer of Clearwater Analytics. “While expanding globally this year, the company responded to the pandemic by implementing initiatives to drive an integrated focus from all our centres in support of our clients. The Clearwater team’s focus on operational excellence and metrics is a model for success. We are all excited to see what the next year brings for our employees; their contributions to our key initiatives and overall roadmap continue to make us better, and to delight our clientele.” 

Clearwater’s cloud-based solution is more vital than ever as the global business community has adapted to evolving remote office work models. Technologies like machine learning, cloud, and hyper-automation are key elements to fortifying the company’s technology and services offering as it serves some of the world’s largest and most complex institutional investors.

“Staying ahead with technological advancements is so important to our company’s mission to be the world’s most trusted and comprehensive software platform for investment accounting and analytics,” said Warren Barkley, Chief Technology Officer of Clearwater Analytics. “New and advancing technologies are the future and, in some ways, the now. They continue to affect how we build a world-class product and the new products we are eager to build at our Delhi-NCR development centre.”

Job roles at the company include skilled positions for software developers, data operations specialists, reconciliation analysts, and investment accounting and reporting experts.

“Over the past year we have built an excellent product development team in India. Given that we have so much more to do, we are looking to further scale our software development effort from India,” said Anurag Singh, Managing Director, India for Clearwater Analytics. “The strength of the talent market in India strongly aligns with Clearwater’s companywide initiatives.”

About Clearwater Analytics

Clearwater Analytics is a global SaaS solution for automated investment data aggregation, reconciliation, accounting, and reporting. Clearwater helps thousands of organisations make the most of their investment portfolio data with a world-class product and client-centric servicing. Clearwater offers a full complement of middle- and back-office solutions like trade confirm/affirm, client billing, composite management, client statements, and more.

Each day, the Clearwater solution reports on more than $4 trillion in assets for clients that include Arch Capital, AXA Art Insurance, Catalina Holdings, Cisco, Convex Group, Facebook, FBD Insurance, Garmin, J.P. Morgan, London & Capital, Oracle, Spotify, Starbucks, Unum Group, and many others.

Since its founding in 2004, Clearwater has provided a cloud-native solution that helps investors make the most of their data. Investment professionals in more than 49 countries trust Clearwater to deliver timely, validated investment data and in-depth reporting.

ABB’s New Analytics and AI Software Helps Producers Optimize Operations in Demanding Market Conditions

The ABB Ability Genix Industrial Analytics and AI Suite is a scalable advanced analytics platform with pre-built, easy-to-use applications and services. It collects, contextualizes and converts operational, engineering and information technology data into actionable insights that help industries improve operations, optimize asset management and streamline business processes safely and sustainably.

Analyst studies suggest that industrial companies typically are able to use only 20 percent¹ of the data generated, which severely limits their ability to apply data analytics meaningfully. ABB’s new solution operates as a digital data convergence point where streams of information from diverse sources across the plant and enterprise are put into context through a unified analytics model. Application of artificial intelligence on this data produces meaningful insights for prediction and optimization that improve business performance.

“We believe that the place to start a data analytics journey in the process, energy and hybrid industries is by building on the existing digital technology – the automation that controls the production processes,” said Peter Terwiesch, President of ABB Industrial Automation. “We see a huge opportunity for our customers to use their data from operations better, by combining it with engineering and information technology data for multi-dimensional decision making. This new approach will help our customers make literally billions of better decisions.”

ABB Ability™ Genix is composed of a data analytics platform and applications, supplemented by ABB services, that help customers decide which assets, processes and risk profiles can be improved, and assists customers in designing and applying those analytics. Featuring a library of applications, customers can subscribe to a variety of analytics on demand, as business needs dictate, speeding up the traditional process of requesting and scheduling support from suppliers.

Scalable from plant to enterprise, ABB Ability™ Genix supports a variety of deployments including cloud, hybrid and on-premise. ABB Ability™ Genix leverages Microsoft Azure for integrated cloud connectivity and services through ABB’s strategic partnership with Microsoft.

“The ABB Ability™ Genix Suite brings unique value by unlocking the combined power of diverse data, domain knowledge, technology and AI,” said Rajesh Ramachandran, Chief Digital Officer for ABB Industrial Automation. “ABB Ability™ Genix helps asset-intensive producers with complex processes to make timely and accurate decisions through deep analytics and optimization across the plant and enterprise.

“We have designed this modular and flexible suite so that customers at different stages in their digitalization journey can adopt ABB Ability™ Genix to accelerate business outcomes while protecting existing investments.”

A key component of ABB Ability™ Genix is the ABB Ability™ Edgenius Operations Data Manager that connects, collects, and analyzes operational technology data at the point of production. ABB Ability™ Edgenius uses data generated by operational technology such as DCS and devices to produce analytics that improve production processes and asset utilization. ABB Ability™ Edgenius can be deployed on its own, or integrated with ABB Ability™ Genix so that operational data is combined with other data for strategic business analytics.

“There is great value in data generated by automation that controls real-time production,” said Bernhard Eschermann, Chief Technology Officer for ABB Industrial Automation. “With ABB Ability™ Edgenius, we can pull data from these real-time control systems and make it available to predict issues and prescribe actions that help us use assets better and fine-tune production processes.”

BCT Digital Launches ‘IND AS 109 Product Suite’ to Tackle Expected Credit Loss

BCT Digital, a global Fintech company specializing in BFSI, Predictive Analytics, and Risk Management, has announced the launch of rt360-ECL solution from ‘IND AS 109 Product Suite’ for Expected Credit Loss (ECL) reporting. The rt360-ECL is an integral part of the IND AS 109 Product Suite and has been designed exclusively keeping in mind the unique and specific nuances of Indian Financial Institutions and the Indian Regulatory Environment.

With the introduction of the global International Financial Reporting Standards-9 (IFRS 9) and its equivalent Indian Accounting Standards (IND AS) 109, financial institutions are moving towards adopting scientific methods for computing credit losses. The first set of guidelines in this regard were issued by the RBI in February 2016, which  was followed by a series of amendments, and the latest one was issued in March 2020. This amendment announced the implementation of the Indian Accounting Standards, including IND AS 109 for NBFCs and Asset Reconstruction Companies.

IND AS 109 requires financial institutions to take the Expected Credit Loss (ECL) approach as opposed to the Incurred Loss approach. Under the ECL approach, credit losses must be granularly and systematically estimated and provided for throughout the life span of a loan. The rt360-ECL is a business-driven technology solution that enables banks to compute Expected Credit Loss as per regulatory guidelines, while addressing requirements such as Point-In-Time Probability of Default (PD), Validation and forward-looking estimates.

“During these unprecedented times, banks are facing huge credit losses as their customers suffer through the COVID-19 pandemic. Managing credit risk in a volatile financial market is very critical. If not carefully monitored, the systemic risks can easily snowball, and this can impact not only the banking network, but also the financial health of the country at a macroeconomic level. The rt360-ECL is an integral part of BCT Digital’s IND AS 109 product suite and has been exclusively designed keeping in mind the unique nature of the Indian regulatory environment and specific nuances of Indian financial institutions.” said  Jaya Vaidhyanathan, CEO at BCT Digital.

The rt360-ECL aggregates banks’ historical data and estimates parameters such as Probability of Default (PD), Loss Given Default (LGD) and Exposure at Default (EAD) and Effective Interest Rate (EIR). It’s inbuilt standard functions support validation and calibration of models to ensure that the process is efficient and robust. It’s essential value additions include automation of credit risk monitoring processes, faster turnaround time to achieve regulatory compliance and internal reporting and proactive credit risk assessment and monitoring. The core features of the rt360-ECL include computing 12 months’ and lifetime ECL for both fund-based and non-fund-based facilities; automated computation of Probability of Default, (Loss Given Default and Exposure at Default); Effective Interest Rate computation; automated validation of parameters as per RBI/Basel requirements through a pre-built library of model validation tests; integration with other solutions, such as core banking/Asset Liability Management systems& and prebuilt dashboards for management reporting. Click here for more information.

BCT Digital being a FinTech specialist and pioneer in risk management solutions aims to empower banks and financial institutions to recognize expected change in credit risk and provide a framework to manage forward-looking credit loss through the rt360 Risk Management Suite. rt360 risk products are a 100% “Made in India”, by BCT Digital, keeping in mind the complexity of internal and external risk factors faced by banks.

Zendesk Commended by Frost & Sullivan for Its Customer-focused Sales Force Automation Solution

Based on its recent analysis of the North American small and mid-sized business (SMB) mobile worker apps market, Frost & Sullivan recognizes Zendesk with the 2020 North American Product Leadership Award for its Sell sales force automation (SFA) solution. The solution stands out for its ease of use, affordable pricing, creative bundling, ongoing support, and emphasis on the customer experience.

“Zendesk Sell is tailored to the needs of SMBs and offers a tiered selection of capabilities. Unlike legacy sales management tools, it supports an omnichannel strategy; provides an easy-to-use, mobile-first experience; and prioritizes integration with both internal company systems and external services,” said Jeanine Sterling, Frost & Sullivan Industry Director. “Significantly, Zendesk is able to leverage the product usage data from over 40,000 Zendesk customers and combine it with information from its Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report for well-rounded insights regarding customer needs.”

Zendesk Sell is available as a standalone offering and as a part of a competitively priced bundle called the Sales Suite. This bundle includes the Zendesk Sell, Chat, Reach, and Voice, which are core tools used by sales representatives to prospect, communicate, and sell. Zendesk Sell is available in a cloud-based as-a-service format, and its subscription pricing model makes it affordable to smaller businesses and allows customers to scale the solution easily.

The company is looking to make the most of its rising brand awareness with creative go-to-market strategies that target existing Zendesk users that need SFA software and value the integration of Sell with other Zendesk products and that target new prospects that are searching for SFA software that is powerful yet easy to use and affordable. These two strategies can potentially tap customer segments that are new to SFA and either seeking to upgrade to a more advanced SFA or replace a legacy or homegrown product.

“The SMB mobile worker applications sector is expected to continue growing, and mobilized SFA solutions, such as Sell, will be key contributors to this trend. The company also continues to forge technology and reseller partnerships, thereby building an ecosystem of apps and alternate channels that open up new global markets,” noted Sterling. “As Zendesk expands into the enterprise sector, its Sell offering and tiered plans will continue to offer SMBs flexibility, scalability, integrations, and the capabilities that smaller businesses need to succeed.”

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has developed a product with innovative features and functionality that is gaining rapid market acceptance. The award recognizes the quality of the solution and the customer value enhancements it enables.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analyses, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.

Delhi, Guwahati Top TRA’s Mental Well being Index During Covid

TRA Research, a consumer insights and brand analytics company, released a whitepaper today tracking the Mental Wellbeing of citizens across urban India during the lockdown period. The survey was conducted across 16 cities between 23rd March and 21st May 2020. The study measured Health Worry, Economy Worry, Family Worry and Financial worry of citizens and their ability to cope with them.

The demographic pattern of the Mental Wellbeing Index (MWBI) shows that citizens of Delhi (NCR) and Guwahati display the highest mental strength in their ability to cope with their anxieties since the coronavirus spread started in India. Hyderabad had 87% Mental Wellbeing Index score displaying ‘Excellent’ Mental ability. Indore and Chandigarh, both at 78% are rated ‘Very Good’ on Mental Wellbeing.

However in the South, most cities showed greater vulnerability in coping with their Covid worries with Chennai having the lowest MWBI score at 43% followed closely by Kochi at 45%. Nagpur was also in the same range with a 44% score.

Speaking about report N. Chandramouli, CEO, TRA Research, said that "Research shows that Mental Wellbeing impacts people's coping effectiveness, relationships, performance, mood, emotional balance, and also physical health. The necessity of measuring Mental Wellbeing is crucial as the most important indicator of how people, cities and countries may get impacted when faced with such a severe crisis, and how they emerge in its wake".

"The sharpening coronavirus curve, a long-drawn lockdown, with related health, economic and financial insecurities have pushed Indian citizens into a wave of mental wellbeing anxieties without enough coping mechanisms." N. Chandramouli added elaborating on the findings of report.

“Mental Wellbeing is ‘bi-directional’, implying that mental illnesses are not merely consequences of the pandemic, but an inability to deal with them effectively can lead to a greater collective impact of the disease”, TRA’s CEO said.

About TRA Research

TRA Research, a Comniscient Group company, is a consumer insights and brand intelligence Company dedicated to understanding and analyzing stakeholder behavior through two globally acclaimed proprietary matrices of Brand Trust and Brand Desire. TRA Research conducts primary research with consumers and stakeholders to assist brands with their business decisions based on Consumer Behaviour insights.

TRA Research is consulting brands on transitioning during and after the Covid-19 crisis, to help them be more aligned to consumer and client expectations. TRA Research is the also the publisher of TRA’s Brand Trust Report and of TRA’s Most Desired Brands.

Accenture on a hiring spree in India; To hire 8,000 by 2010

Global technology and consultancy firm, Accenture has said that it is going to add around 8,000 people in India by the end of next year taking its total employee base in the country to 50,000.

"We are 42,000 right now and we imagine we will be about 50,000 by the end of 2010," said Accenture Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, William D Green on the sidelines of the India Economic Summit. Indicating a recovery from the global downturn, Green said the company will continue to focus in India, specially in the areas of analytics, reports a media.

Accenture's focus in India is going to be the analytics space, which will help its clients in converting information into insights for better yields. Green added, "We believe that analytics is going to be an important trend that our customers are going to demand from us. We think India is going to be a great place for us. We have some core centres of excellence in the analytics space in the country."

Accenture, which has annual revenue of $21.58 billion for fiscal 2009, will strengthen its focus on clients in pharmaceutical, telecommunications and energy in the country.

Agencies

IBM, Google, Oracle, Microsoft suggest newspapers ways To generate net revenue

Some of the world’s most prominent technology companies are offering suggestions to publishers on how they can charge readers for news online.

IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and Google — a company some newspapers blame for helping dig their financial hole — responded to a request by the Newspaper Association of America for proposals on ways to easily charge for news on the web.

But building the infrastructure for charging readers is one part of the equation. The other part looks more challenging: getting publishers to make the leap and stop giving news out for free on the web.

Randy Bennett, the senior vicepresident of business development at the newspaper association, said his group initiated the process after a meeting of publishers in May near Chicago. A report that was posted online on Wednesday by the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University includes 11 different responses from technology companies. Google’s proposal may be the most eyebrow raising, if only because the company — which aggregates thousands of articles from media outlets on its news pages — is so closely associated with the freewheeling ethos of an open internet.

Google proposed offering news organizations a version of its Google Checkout system, which is used for processing online payments. It would give readers a place to sign in to an account and then pay for media from a variety of sources without having to punch in their information over and over. And the company says it could offer publishers several pay methods, from basic subscriptions to socalled “micropayments” on a perarticle basis.

Along with the technology heavyweights offering ideas are tiny startups. CircLabs, run by just four people and incubated at the Missouri School of Journalism, is developing a program that would feed news from different sources into a bar across the top of web browsers. Martin Langeveld, the company’s executive vicepresident, said the application will offer both targeted advertising and the option of charging.

Agencies

Seven-year IT services deal signed by IBM, Qantas

According to a report the outsourcing deal is valued at up to $200 million which could cost up to 178 Qantas workers their jobs

IBM Corp. said that it has signed a seven-year outsourcing contract with Qantas, Australia's largest airline, for the provision of project delivery functions, as part of the airline's improved business efficiency goals.

David Hall, Qantas executive manager of corporate services and technology, said the agreement with IBM will enable a fast transformation, increased efficiencies, and improved customer experience.

"Qantas believes the partnership with IBM will give us access to IBM's scale, strength, expertise, and the latest tools and technologies available in the global marketplace. We are confident that IBM will deliver significant benefits to our business," he said.

Under the contract, Qantas will gain access to IBM's deep research, analytics and business optimization capabilities.

"Qantas' partnership with IBM represents a major step towards the airline's mission to lead and innovate in the competitive airline industry," said Katie Bambrick, IBM Global Business Services Managing Partner for Australia and New Zealand.

"Drawing on IBM's advanced technologies and the airline industry expertise IBM has built over the last half-century, this partnership has an exciting future," said Ms Bambrick.

According to Australian IT the outsourcing deal with IBM is valued at up to $200 million which could cost up to 178 workers their jobs.

Staff at Qantas's project delivery team are set to transfer to IBM as part of the deal. Those who do not accept new employment terms from IBM will be forced to take redundancy, the report said.

Agencies

New Internet browser from Opera

Norway's Opera Software released on Tuesday a new version of its browser, Opera 10, promising faster downloads, new design and new fea
tures.

Opera battles for the spot of third-largest browser maker with Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari, but is far behind Microsoft and Mozilla Foundation.

Opera said the new browser is significantly faster on resource-intensive pages such as Gmail and Facebook, and adds features like full thumbnails of all open tabs.

Opera said its Turbo feature for slow connections, which packages web pages, makes the browser up to eight times faster than rival browsers in low connection speeds.

"We have worked a lot on Opera Turbo technology and have also made major improvements on the overall product stability. This is the most stable Opera browser yet," the company said.

The companies usually release several successive test versions of their browsers so they can incorporate user feedback in a series of improvements before their final launch. Microsoft launched its latest IE8 browser in March after a year of public beta testing.

Opera unveiled a public test version of the browser on June 3. Microsoft's Internet Explorer is used for about 60 per cent of global Internet traffic, and Mozilla's Firefox has about 30 per cent, with usage of Opera, Google and Apple all around 3 per cent each, according to Web analytics firm StatCounter.

Opera has a small share of the global desktop browser market, but its browser is the most popular in countries like Russia or Ukraine, and its mobile browser is the most widely used browser on handsets.

Agencies

Will MindTree touch $1 bn revenue by 2014?

Mid-sized software services firm MindTree, which completed 10 years on Tuesday, will come up with newer strategies as it aims to achieve over $1 billion in revenues by March, 2014. The company, which counts steel-maker Arcelor Mittal and Swedish truckmaker Volvo among its top customers, will be focusing on areas like energy, defence and healthcare. The firm is also targeting newer geographies like Japan.

“We are making strategic investment in defence, working along with DRDO and focusing on areas which deal with the surveillance space. There isn’t much revenue contribution right now, but the potential in long run is great” , said S Janakiraman, president and CEO, R&D services and one of the 10 co-founders of MindTree. MindTree is also building video surveillance , analytics solutions and new telemedicine solutions for the burgeoning rural healthcare market. “We recently had a major win from an Apac telecom firm and an European consumer appliance company. The size of the contracts is worth $5-6 million”, he said.

Mr Janakiraman said that MindTree will be the fastest growing company once the recovery happens as they are making more investments for innovations. “The 15% salary cut of 200 employees out of 8,000 will be immediately restored once business picks up”. MindTree has also bagged a contract for IT services from Swift, the financial messaging provider, and has plans to tap energy sector.

“We have put the team in place and are talking to large energy companies in Europe and the US,” said Anjan Lahiri, president and CEO, IT services and one of the co-founders of MindTree.

Agencies

Analytics company SPSS Inc to be acquired by IBM

IBM plans to buy technology services company SPSS Inc for about $1.2 billion in cash, the companies said on Tuesday.

SPSS shareholders will receive $50 a share, a 42% premium to Monday's closing price of $35.09 on Nasdaq.

Chicago-based SPSS provides predictive analytics software and services. Predictive analytics are used by companies to forecast future trends and spot shifts in consumer patterns, helping them control costs and use resources more wisely.

IBM said the deal will help expand its Information on Demand software portfolio and business analytics capabilities.

Shares of SPSS jumped 41 per cent in premarket trade to about $49.50. The shares had already enjoyed a gain of about 30 per cent this year.

The deal values SPSS at about 25 times analysts' estimated 2010 earnings per share, and the $50 per share price represents an all-time high for the stock, topping its previous all-time top of $47.87.

The deal is subject to SPSS shareholder approval and regulatory clearances, and is expected to close later in the second half of 2009, the companies said.

Separately, IBM said it has acquired closely-held Ounce Labs Inc, whose software helps companies reduce the risks and costs associated with security and compliance concerns. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Back in May, IBM's chief financial officer, Mark Loughridge, told the Reuters Technology Summit that the valuations of potential acquisition targets were attractive. IBM has spent $20 billion buying more than 100 companies since 2000, paying prices that range from as little as $50 million to as much as $5 billion.

Agencies