Larsen & Toubro Infotech Ltd., a global technology consulting and digital solutions company, announced the availability of its Digital Engineering & Construction Solution for Engineering, Construction and Operations (EC&O) companies. The pre-configured solution for SAP S/4 HANA opens up an array of digital transformation opportunities for asset-intensive industries like Engineering & Construction, Heavy Engineering and large projects-based organizations.
The key features of LTI’s Digital Engineering & Construction Solution are:
· Converges physical and digital by connecting people, equipment and site operations to transact anywhere, anytime.
· Manages large numbers of internal and external stakeholders with intricate interdependencies to preempt and proactively manage technical, operational, financial, resource related and other risks.
· Accelerates implementation with LTI’s Mosaic platform, driving projects from planning through execution with mobile apps, execution workbench & project management cockpit.
· Leverages SAP Leonardo, and advanced capabilities of SAP S/4HANA and SAP Cloud Platform.
· Benchmarks processes for higher level of excellence and intelligence and thereby equips site supervisors, project managers and business leaders with tools to make better and timely decisions.
· Multiple deployment options to match business priorities and enterprise roadmaps.
Johnny Clemmons, SAP EC&O Business Unit Head, said, “I’m very excited about the work LTI has done to build a preconfigured SAP S/4HANA solution for engineering and construction customers. LTI has leveraged their extensive industry experience and worked with the SAP EC&O Industry Business Unit and several of our product teams to ensure they aligned with SAP strategy. This should be a real value accelerator for engineering and construction companies who are looking to optimize their business today and innovate to drive future success.”
Aftab Ullah, COO, LTI said, “At LTI, we have built deep expertise in the Engineering & Construction sector given our rich heritage and relationship with L&T Group. Our Digital Engineering & Construction Solution solves intricate industry problems, bringing together industry expertise, digital capabilities and our partnership with SAP. This modular solution can accurately capture execution details in a uniform manner to deliver significant business value.”
LTI is a Diamond Exhibitor at SAPPHIRE NOW from June 5-7 in Orlando, Florida and will demo the Digital Engineering & Construction Solution at the conference.
Avaya Holdings Corp. has announced that the new Avaya IP Office release is now available globally. Avaya IP Office helps businesses drive greater productivity and streamline collaboration through a single application for all communications channels, meetings, team collaboration and content sharing. Avaya IP Office adds support for Avaya Equinox®, the company’s signature UC experience, as well as other new capabilities that provide an enterprise-level experience with the ease of use and management that small and midsize businesses require.
“The Avaya IP Office solution serves an enormous base -- 26 million users and growing -- and we continue to evolve the solution in ways that support businesses ability to be agile and collaborative,” said Chris McGugan, SVP, Solutions and Technologies, Avaya. “By providing a single app to access all the tools they need to efficiently communicate and collaborate, we’re truly enabling teams to work smarter, not harder.”
The enhanced IP Office solution includes Avaya’s innovative unified communications and collaboration capabilities and can deliver greater value through flexible deployment options – cloud, hybrid and on-premises. Avaya IP Office can leverage the unique Avaya Vantage and newest J Series desktop phones for voice and video, in addition to the Avaya Equinox soft and mobile clients. For European customers, the solution also nearly doubles scalability for DECT users.
“As businesses move their communications and collaboration capabilities to the cloud, they look for robust, business-grade solutions delivering familiar, yet enhanced user and admin experiences,” said Elka Popova, Vice President and Senior Fellow, Connected Work and Digital Experience at Frost & Sullivan. “With support for Avaya Equinox and all deployment options, Avaya IP Office offers partners and small and midsize business customers a proven UC solution with an advanced, contemporary user interface designed for highly mobile and collaborative work environments. Avaya made a commitment to shift its solutions portfolio to the cloud and the launch of Avaya IP Office with Avaya Equinox shows that the vendor is delivering on its promise.”
For the small business, a new highly affordable, cradle-to-grave reporting and tracking package improves measurement of call activities to enable even the smallest of organizations to enhance customer engagement. Avaya Chronicall for IP Office, OEM’d from Avaya DevConnect partner Xima, provides over 50 standard plus customizable reports that support visual call management, customizable displays and agent performance, and is available in both on-premises and Powered by Avaya IP Office cloud deployments.
“As a solution provider and intermediary between vendors and clients, it’s important that we have a record of live conversations to ensure that we have a reference point of critical elements affecting a client’s satisfaction,” said Derek Gray, Carousel Cloud Solutions Specialist. “Chronicall with IP Office logs everything that happens on the call, providing us with call history, recording and real-time reporting, with a clean, easy to use interface. This not only provides us with what we need, but is also a perfect fit for our customers."
Partners utilizing Avaya’s Powered by IP Office cloud platform also benefit from these new capabilities and can offer them to new or existing customers in either a full cloud or hybrid cloud deployment delivery model. Partners will also have new installation wizards and management tools to make it even easier and faster to deploy and manage both premises-based and cloud options. For example, the new Cloud Operations Manager simplifies administration of large multi-customer cloud deployments, upgrades, patching and application inventory with role-based administration that helps ensure security.
Supporting its vision to improve the way the world works and lives, Accenture is committing more than US$200 million over the next three years to help equip people around the world with job skills for the digital age.
“As a technology leader, we have an obligation to apply new scalable technology solutions to help solve complex societal challenges,” said Pierre Nanterme, Accenture’s chairman and CEO. “Our investments will continue to empower Accenture to produce socially minded partnerships and programs that will have a profound impact on the lives of millions of people throughout the world, now and for the future.”
Rekha M. Menon, chairman and sr. managing director, Accenture in India, said, “In India we are focused on providing skills to help disadvantaged people get jobs and start businesses, and under Skills to Succeed we’ve collaborated with strategic non-profit organizations and used digital technologies to deliver impact at scale. So far, we’ve enabled more than 380,000 people including women and people with disabilities, to earn livelihoods for themselves, and create employment for others.”
Accenture’s commitment will help support Skills to Succeed, Tech4Good, Accenture Development Partnerships and related Accenture initiatives.
The company’s Skills to Succeed initiative advances employment and entrepreneurship opportunities, leveraging digital innovation to help close employment gaps at scale. Together with a network of nonprofits and other ecosystem partners, Accenture has since 2010 equipped more than 2.2 million people with the skills to get a job or build a business, with a goal of equipping a total of more than 3 million people by 2020. Examples of Accenture’s Skills to Succeed partnerships include:
· Helping Youth Business USA develop a platform that uses artificial intelligence and analytics to connect young entrepreneurs from under-represented communities with the resources, skills, training and mentoring needed to grow their business.
· Working with Rede Cidadã and Instituto Ser Mais in Brazil to provide low-income populations with the business and technical skills they need to build meaningful, lasting careers in technology, including the opportunity to be hired by Accenture.
· Working with Anudip Foundation to provide disadvantaged youth and women in underserved communities with the digital skills needed to work on online work platforms of the new digital economy.
· Enabling Quest Alliance with a detailed technology roadmap to build a Skills to Succeed mobile learning ecosystem to take learning beyond the classroom and empowering youth to take charge of their learning and career pathways.
· Partnering with Enable India to develop a mobile social networking platform, Hamaari Vaani, that uses mobile network connectivity to reach persons with disabilities in remote rural areas to build a community to help find information on welfare schemes, education and employment and more importantly dignity.
Accenture’s Tech4Good projects use advanced technologies to help solve critical challenges facing business and society. For instance, the company collaborated with The Grameen Foundation India, using technologies from AI to augmented reality, to help disadvantaged people improve their financial literacy to enhance their financial and social well-being. In collaboration with Club Egalité, Accenture Labs in Sophia Antipolis, France, is developing a virtual-reality game that helps teen students explore future-proof jobs and develop critical skills for the digital economy, with the goal of encouraging an interest in STEM careers.
Accenture Development Partnerships works across government, business and civil society, applying business and technology solutions to build capacity and strengthen programs for development organizations around the globe. For example, Accenture collaborated with the Spanish Ministry of Employment and a consortium of nonprofit partners and corporations in 2013 to create Emplea+, an online program that helps marginalized individuals develop technical, digital and soft skills needed for employment.
“The opportunity to improve lives requires collaboration across business, government and non-governmental organizations,” Nanterme said. “As leaders weigh new technologies and applications, we all must ask ourselves: Does this benefit the next generation? If the answer is yes, it’s the right thing to do.”
To capture the opportunities arising out of new mobility trends and to bring organizational focus and alignment, Tata Motors today announced the appointment of Shailesh Chandra to lead the Electric Mobility Business in addition to his current responsibility. He has been promoted as President- Electric Mobility Business & Corporate Strategy, with immediate effect and will continue to be a member of the Executive Committee. Creation of this new business vertical will enable Tata Motors to deliver on its aspiration of providing innovative & competitive e-mobility solutions.
“Tata Motors is optimistic about the future of Electric vehicles and would play a leading role in the electric mobility evolution in the country. We will also leverage on the capabilities of other Tata Group companies to develop the full ecosystem and fast track the adoption of e-mobility.” said, Guenter Butschek, Chief Executive Officer & Managing Director, Tata Motors.
Shailesh has played an instrumental role in leading the project teams to deliver the EESL project and has been closely working with some of the Group companies and other ecosystem partners in his current role.
Commenting on the announcement, Shailesh Chandra, President- Electric Mobility Business & Corporate Strategy said, “It is an exciting responsibility and I keenly look forward to drive Tata Motors’ vision of proactively developing the e-Mobility ecosystem in the country and leveraging this new opportunity for the company.”
Tata Motors is committed to the Government’s vision for electric vehicles by 2030 and will work in a collaborative manner to facilitate faster adoption of electric vehicles and to build a sustainable future for India.
Strongly cementing its position as a preferred Managed Services Provider, Progressive Infotech The Managed Services Provider has been included in the ‘Magic Quadrant Perspective’ based on its market performance and by corroborating claims with references as well as independent analysts.
Magic Quadrant (MQ) refers to a chain of market research reports issued by the global research and advisory firm, Gartner. It relies on the proprietary qualitative data analysis techniques leveraged by Gartner to depict market trends vis-à-vis direction, maturity, and participants.
Progressive Infotech is an India-centric, global Managed Services Provider that has been fueling business innovation through the power of cloud, digital & DevOps by managing end-to-end IT infrastructure including cloud, on-premises, and hybrid infrastructure. Progressive Infotech has more than two decades of in-depth industry experience and provides NextGen Managed Services and Digital Transformation Services. NextGen Services consist of Service Desk, Workplace Management, Hybrid Data Center Services, Network Management, Security Management, Application Performance Management, and DRaaS (Disaster Recovery as a Service). On the other hand, Digital Transformation Services include Analytics, Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, IoT (Internet of Things), Enterprise Content Management, Digital Workplace Management, Mobility, and DevOps.
On the development, Prateek Garg, Founder and CEO, Progressive Infotech said, “At Progressive Infotech, we are focused on providing unsurpassed services to our customers. We are delighted to know that our constant efforts have yielded the desired market results and have now garnered us this prestigious recognition. We strongly believe that this has been because of each and every member’s contribution to the organization and to our client’s success. The recognition will undoubtedly boost our collective motivation and help us deliver superlative customer satisfaction that the brand has become synonymous with.”
Progressive Infotech is hailed as the first managed services provider of AWS and Microsoft Azure in India. It is a CMMI Level 3 company that has more than 75 solution architects, over 200 consultants, and a clientele of more than 200 businesses.
CASHe, India’s most preferred digital lending company for young salaried millennials, promoted by serial entrepreneur and private equity investor V. Raman Kumar has announced that it has entered into a strategic partnership with BankBazaar.com, India’s leading neutral online marketplace, to offer its short-term personal loans on its online financial platform. Under the partnership, users of Bankbazaar.com will now have easy access to instant short-term credit facility from CASHe through its multiple loan options ranging from Rs 10,000 to Rs 200,000 payable over 15, 30, 90 days and 180 days.
The fintech company currently processes over 27,000 loan applications in a month and has achieved an overall loan disbursal of Rs 400 crores with 1.8 million app downloads and over 1.5 lakh active users since launch of operations in April 2016. The company is aiming to achieve an overall loan disbursal of Rs 900 crores by March 2019.
Speaking about the partnership, Chairman of Aeries Financial Technologies, V. Raman Kumar, said: “We are excited to partner with BankBazaar.com in this strategic tie up as it allows CASHe to be on BankBazar platform where our potential customers are present and comparing various personal loans from other financial institutions. BankBazaar.com’s customers will now benefit from CASHe’s best-in-class differentiated product suite in the retail loan segment. This partnership also will help us expand our customer base exponentially with this leading neutral online marketplace recording over 90 million visitors in the last quarter of 2018. BankBazaar has been at the forefront in redefining the buying experience when it comes to the purchase of financial services for the Indian consumers. We are confident that this partnership will create a win-win situation for those customers who until now were being dropped off by lending institutions due to inadequate credit rating scores. CASHe with its social behaviour filtering algorithm will allow access to such customers to a wide array of instant short-term personal loans on its lending platform.” he added.
Commenting on the collaboration, Navin Chandani, Chief Business Development Officer, BankBazaar, said: At BankBazaar.com, our mission is to help our customers access the widest range of financial products on our platform. Partnering with a fintech company like CASHe is a step in this direction. With CASHe’s integration, we are now able to offer short-term personal loans to our customers who otherwise would not qualify for loans by financial institutions that typically offer medium- to long-term loan products. We are very positive about this tie up with an agile and digitally focussed player like CASHe as we see a huge demand for a loan product offering that is instant, hassle-free and convenient.
CASHe provides hassle-free loans with its app enabled documentation and loan disbursal process. Powered by its industry-first algorithm driven credit scoring platform, The Social Loan Quotient (SLQ), CASHe quickly determines a user’s credit worthiness by using multiple unique data points to arrive at a distinct credit profile of the customer. SLQ is transforming the traditional credit rating measurements thereby providing immediate loans to the under-served young professionals who are kept out by traditional credit rating and banking systems. CASHe is completely automated and requires no personal intervention and no physical documentation. The average time taken for a loan to be disbursed is about 8 minutes, subject to proper submission of all documents.
Air India has asked the government to “restore” equity infusion in the carrier, after it failed to find any takers for its disinvestment.
The loss-making carrier has already received more than Rs 26,000 crore under the bailout package announced by the former UPA government in April 2012.
“We have sought restoration of the equity infusion in Air India and have written to the government last week in this regard,” a senior airline official said.
The UPA government had approved a turnaround plan under which Air India is to receive a total equity infusion worth Rs 30,231 crore up to 2021, subject to meeting certain performance thresholds.
Amid fund crunch, during which Air India also had to defer its staff salaries, the airline borrowed Rs 6,250 crore from various banks between September last year and January this year for working capital requirements and other needs.
The carrier, which has a debt burden of about Rs 50,000 crore till March last year, had been receiving about Rs 3,000-4,000 crore equity infusion on an average per fiscal from the government till FY14. However, after that the amount was gradually reduced. For 2018-19, the airline has been allocated Rs 650 crore in view of its now failed disinvestment plan.
The government had proposed to offload 76 per cent equity share capital of the national carrier as well as transfer the management control to private players, besides complete sale of its low-cost arm Air India Express and its entire stake in 50:50 joint venture AI-SATS.
