Jighi JIRB are the brain the transformative power of data that enables autonomous Knowledge Discovery. More on Jighi.com

Fig 1: Data-Information-Knowledge

Jighi’s Knowledge Discovery Platform (KDP), enables Information generation from raw data. Information consists of facts built from raw data. Data is first aggregated, then analyzed to develop those facts. So, information [or facts] is organized, analyzed, compared and benchmarked against establish information (other known facts) along a contextual dimension to generate knowledge. Hence, for Jighi, Knowledge consists of of information contextualized to fully describe an experience, a perspective, judgments, and projections. Knowledge enables predictions, decisions and actions to influence current and future events.

However, Knowledge is not innate. Knowledge is accumulated over time and along a specific domain (Knowledge of History; Knowledge of Physics, Knowledge of a hiking trail, etc…). Knowledge is held over time and applied on-demand to address a situation. Hence experience embedded in data is extracted and then applied to information to create Knowledge. Knowledge enables interpretation, judgements, predictions or decision on a course of actions. In everyday life, ordinary people and business leaders use knowledge to make judgment calls and predictions. Whether we realize it or not, we constantly apply Knowledge to information regarding a situation to help us decide how to handle the situation.

Fig 2: Jighi Information Reference Base (JIRB) developed by Netwex

Information Reference Base (IRB) are factual historical and present information clusters that have been collected, analyzed and stored by the Netwex Custom Architecture for Data Engineering (CADE). Jighi uses IRBs the same way humans use their experience or their knowledge to appropriately interpret information into knowledge. This knowledge allows one to easily understand the data and help make the right decision or prediction.

The collaboration between Jighi and Netwex enables businesses to generate wonderful analytics and reports that highlight hidden aspects of their business information.

Long before all the others, Amazon.com understood that it could not succeed alone. The world was too diverse and too competitive for enabling the organic growth of one online retail powerhouse. So, they Jeff and his lieutenants decided to create a model that is collaborative and hence uses everybody (small and large retail stores) to grow and sustain its prominence position. Today, thousands of small retail shops, specialty stores, aggregators and vendors seamlessly sell their products through Amazon. It is a remarkable business model and a successful example of collaborative offerings that turn potential competitors into partners and greatly benefit customers as well. With Amazon.com, customers have one place to shop, one user experience, one payment system, and one refund policy. However, choice is not limited. “Au contraire”, customers have thousands of sellers and offers to choose from. Their products, itemized description, prices and inventory are seamlessly displayed as if they were seating in Amazon’s own depot. Because of this ability to provide unified experience, many of us would research products on the Internet, compare prices and read reviews but ultimately we would come back to Amazon to make the purchase. This requires an extensive data engineering facility very much like what Netwex offers its clients

It is self evident that the Amazon.com’s business model was made possible by a technology that allows Amazon.com to seamlessly link its thousands of third party vendors inventory into a virtual unified data store and create an integrated process flow that maintains the individuality of each third party store while providing and unified view to the customer on Amazon’s site. A balanced masterfully engineered on a framework similar to Netwex’s architecture and data engineering platform. When you’re on Amazon’s web site, you can see in real-time item availabilities even the items the items are offered by third party retailers. I have to admit that Amazon.com did not use Netwex’s service. However, their understanding that data is their most critical asset is very much inline with Netwex’s business vision. As pioneer data transformation to drive business, Amazon.com understood the value of data sooner than most businesses. And it took advantage of it.

The point of this story is that businesses collect enormous amount of data. However, it is not always clear that they use the data as company’s asset that can be used to increase the bottom line. Netwex Systems, Inc. offers raw data transformation into information assets that drive business activities and increase revenue.

With flexibility and agility at the core of our services, Netwex’s goal is to assist the Jeff Bezos of the worlds to create the next generation of successful businesses based future data-driven innovative business models.

By Netwex Systems, Inc.

Breaking the Rules

Amazon.com is a company that is closely tied with the e-commerce phenomenon. Jeff Bezos, the founder of the company, broke the rules of the book business by using the Internet rather than conventional distribution channels. Based in Seattle, USA, the company has grown from a book seller to a virtual Wall Mart of the Web selling products as diverse as music CDs, software, office products, electronics, toys, games, cookware, hardware, food, and health products. The company has also grown at a tremendous rate with revenue rising from about US$150 million in 1997 to US$5.2 billion in 2003.

Entrepreneurial Spirit of Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon.com

Amazon.com was founded by Jeff Bezos, a computer science and electrical engineering graduate from Princeton University. Bezos had moved to Seattle after resigning as a Senior Vice-President at D.E.Shaw, a Wall Street investment bank. He didn’t know much about the Internet. But he came across a statistic that the Internet was growing at 2300%, which convinced him that it was a large growth opportunity. Not knowing much more, he plunged into the world of e-commerce with no prior retailing experience.

He chose to locate the company in Seattle because it had a large pool of technical talent and since it was close to one of the largest book wholesalers located in Rosenburg, Oregon. He was thinking of the company as a bookseller at the beginning. Moreover, the sales tax laws for online retailers state that one has to charge sales tax in the state in which one is incorporated. Therefore it was logical to locate in a small state.

The company went online in July 1995. In May 1997, Amazon.com went public. As a symbol of the company’s frugality, Jeff and the first team built desks out of doors and four-by-fours. The company was started in a garage. Initial business meetings were conducted at a local Barnes and Noble store. Bezos picked the name Amazon for his company because it started with the letter A, signified something big, and it was easy to spell.1

For his contribution, Jeff Bezos was picked as the 1999 Time person of the year at the age of 35 making him the fourth-youngest person of the year. Describing why it choose Bezos, Time magazine said, “Bezos’ vision of the online retailing universe was so complete, his Amazon.com site so elegant and appealing that it became from Day One the point of reference for anyone who had anything to sell online.”

The Largest Communications Equipment Supplier Focused Solely on Access.

Several hundred-service providers operating tens of millions of access lines depend on Calix to power their access networks. Industry-leading solutions deployable throughout the access network enable a rich set of information, communication, and entertainment services over any combination of fiber and coppers, thus helping Calix customers gain a competitive edge.

Business Challenge:

Calix offers a wide variety of membership products to its customers, each with its own terms and duration. This presented a unique revenue recognition challenge. Calix Finance Group found itself in the position of having to manually calculate revenue recognition each month for each product they sell. Given the manual nature of the process, the Finance group had to restrict the number of products that could be offered, significantly limiting the potential of the company to grow new revenue streams. To resolve this issue, the Finance group wanted an automated revenue recognition system, which would meet increasingly stringent financial system auditing requirements while not limiting Calix’s flexibility to provide their customer base with a variety of membership products.

“Working with Netwex Systems was a positive experience. They were professional, committed, disciplined, and able to keep their eye on the big picture while enmeshed in the details. They delivered real business value to our organization on-time and on-budget. I’d be pleased to engage them again.” Phuc Tran Finance Controller, Calix, Inc.

Requirements:

• Implement FAS 97-2 Accounting requirement
• A report that reflects the value of deferred revenue and deferred COGS.
• Process to defer all service revenue and recognize revenue on the usage based.

Solution:

After reviewing and rejecting a variety of packaged software solutions, Calix determined that a custom-built system was the most cost-effective and efficient approach to meet their needs. With limited resources available in-house, Calix was interested in working with an outside vendor to deliver this system. However, negative experiences with other consulting companies left IT leadership cautious of open-ended relationships. They wanted a true development partner who would shoulder some of the risk and commit to a set cost and timeframe. In addition, Calix did not want to outsource all the system knowledge and become dependent on an outside firm for maintenance and upgrades to the system. Our end result was to give Calix a single source of “clean” revenue data while implementin business intelligence solutions for analyzing revenue.
Netwex Systems responded with a fixed price proposal to develop Calix’s revenue recognition system with an integrated team of Netwex  and Calix team members. Using Netwex’s project delivery approach, the team worked closely with the Finance group and with internal IT personnel to define, iteratively develop, and deploy a system to manage complex cash and revenue transactions.

Result:

Working together, Netwex and Calix developed a flexible but rigorous solution to Calix’s revenue recognition challenge. The system was designed and delivered in four months, meeting both cost and schedule targets. The Calix Finance group now has an automated way to view, drill-down on, and summarize cost and revenue transactions, saving hours of manual labor and significantly increasing the accuracy of their data. Having this system on the back-end now enables the Calix Sales team to develop, test, and implement a virtually unlimited number of price points, terms, and feature subscription bundles.

Netwex can help you make the fundamental shift to a smarter, fact-based enterprise. How can this help your organization? A more predictive information strategy paves the way for more intelligent business decisions.

Because you know your data and your business, you may leverage leading edge algorithms, and advanced mathematic, methods and capabilities to develop predictive analytics and business optimization to create new solutions for your unique challenges. These methods enable you to discover predictive insights and turn them into operational reality to close the gap between strategy and execution.

However, without the proper data to feed your formulae, your predictive algorithms will just be “the hammer without nails”.Netwex ’s CADE and experience enable you to harness your data globally (including partners data) in real-time to help you grow and thrive in these challenging conditions.

By providing a built-in Custom Analytics and Optimization Layer, Netwex understands that despite a global macro economic landscape, all businesses are unique; with unique sets of data, unique opportunities and challenges. That individuality (your own differentiated IP) can be expressed in the Custom Analytics and Optimization layer of  Netwex’s Custom Architecture Data Engineering (CADE).

If businesses can be predictive, then Netwex’s CADE is the crystal through which the prediction is formulated.

Although Netwex’s CADE has data mining capability of its own, it is mostly is powerful knowledge discovery engine (KDE). It enables extraction and consolidation of data from many sources and exposes only one data pipe to the embedded data-consuming engine. This removes the impediments of working across the enterprise IT with data coming from many venues and sources.

Netwex’s CADE data platform provides a facility for data analysis also known as information discovery. It discovers information within the data that most queries and reports can’t effectively reveal. This information allows the user to predict behaviors and future trends, allowing businesses to make proactive, knowledge-driven decisions.

Turning Data into Information, and Information into Knowledge

The ultimate goal of an analysis is to reach actionable information herein referred to as knowledge. Knowledge enables predictions, decisions and actions to influence future events.

Background

SkyPilot Networks is a leading provider of carrier-class broadband wireless equipment that enables service providers, municipalities, and public safety agencies to rapidly deploy cost-effective network services, including last-mile Internet access, voice over IP, Wi-Fi hotspots, video surveillance, and other wireless applications.

Netwex implemented a real-time integration between Salesforce.com and SkyPilots Oracle Applications System using Oracle BPEL Process Manager. At the time of deployment, there were 3,600 transactions being processed each day. The project took approximately 12 weeks which included designing the business process flows, process development, custom user interface development, and full user testing. With Salesforce.com and Oracle BPEL Process Manager in place, SkyPilots could more efficiently focus
on reach and revenue.

Pain Points

The homegrown application at SkyPilot was not integrated globally. SkyPilots’ Oracle Financials ERP system held the hardware customer information, but SkyPilots’ service customers were invoiced in another system. Meanwhile, partner information was in a partner database and support data was in another homegrown system. Although the forecasting application tried to roll up these silos into a single view, reports revealed conflicting numbers. Weekly forecasting meetings often degenerated into sessions in which executives wasted time deciphering inconsistent figures—time that was intended for discussing strategy, key opportunities, and support needs. SkyPilot needed one synchronized machine, so that they could capitalize on revenue opportunities and service customers with the same standard with which they service their own. They needed to tie our business processes together. They had silos of information throughout the sales regions, and the fragmentation undermined the efficiency that they were striving for in the field. What SkyPilot needed was one integrated, sales-focused business system.

Solution

• Leverage Salesforce’s outbound messaging functionality
• Develop webservices using Oracle BPEL for Salesforce’s outbound message
• Deploy the Oracle webservice in Salesforce and eliminate duplicate entry information in various systems

Results and Benefits

• The Salesforce system integrates sales process with key business functions to capitalize on revenue opportunities more efficiently
• Salesforce was implemented early, under budget, and with high user adoption
• The implementation resulted in shorter sales cycles and accelerated lead conversion from weeks and months to as little as a day
• The integration has also improved Skypilot’ ROI on its existing Oracle Financials investment