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Acclimatization

I was trekking in the Himalayas recently and one word stood out clear and loud:

Acclimatization

Initially, it seemed like an overused word that sounds good in high altitudes. Science says that air gets thinner as we gain altitude and hence the body needs to work harder with limited supply of oxygen. I ran into lot of people who were on their way back from the summit and kept saying to drink lots of fluids (water) and acclimatize with every step (whatever that meant).

Every day, we would gain altitude of few hundred feet and rest for the night. This was supposed to help the body get used to lower oxygen levels, fewer oxygen percent points each day. Some bodies adapt faster and some slower. The slowest ones needed to be evacuated in a helicopter to lower altitudes as soon as possible. I saw a lot of helicopters making rounds and it usually wasn’t good news.

Every time one starts working on a new job, there is an in-built acclimatization process. I broadly classify new job acclimatizing into three categories: Technical, Cultural, and Political.

“Technical” is the skillset that’s needed to complete tasks effectively. These are the skills that got you inside the door. Demonstrate the skills; keep improving; share; grow.

“Cultural” is more about the “fit”. Every company’s culture is different and unique. People come to me and say “We used to do it like this at my previous company. It is so different here (I’m not liking this)”. While corporate culture is a broad term, ask yourself if your values and company’s values align well. Are your Values Aligned? Does the company culture giving you the flexibility and room for creativity that you yearn for? It is very hierarchical or it is more flat structured (and which one suits your working style better)? Would a Netflix culture fit you better or do you like a more traditional by-the-book culture?

“Political” is not necessary bad politics. While no company takes pride in admitting that internal politics prevail within the company, it does exist to varying extent in all companies. Understanding the company’s powerhouses and long term goals is key to ensure you’re getting acclimatized. Who are the key decision makers, their thought processes, getting buy-in from key people on various initiatives are some of the areas that needs attention during the acclimatization process.

Is there a preset duration for acclimatization? No, there isn’t. Some adapt faster and some slower. The slowest ones end up hating the job and eventually will leave (helicopter evacuation).

While every company expects a new hire to bring in new energy and ideas, it is important that the new hire acclimatizes well before proposing and implementing drastically new ideas. It is very important to understand the current processes and situation before proposing a radical idea that might have worked well at a different company in the past.

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Retail

E-commerce platform development

Client focus

Client wanted to develop a new e-commerce platform to sell agricultural goods to farmers and purchase the farm produce.

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SKU on the platform
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customer monthly customer visits
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Orders fulfilled
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Sell goods and buy produce

Challenges

  • Help client enable e-commerce with the farming community to sell and maintain an online catalog of products.
  • Enable fulfillment of customer orders and an end to end solution with API enablement to integrate with others partners in the supply chain
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Solutions

  • Worked with the client to define the functional solution and technical architecture of the e-commerce platform
  • A web front end and native mobile builds were generated for an omni channel experience
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Key Benefits

  • Rapid development and deployment of platform enabled faster time to market with a unified experience
  • A fully scalable micro-services platform that fulfilled over 4 million order in the initial year of operations
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Data led digital transformation

Client focus

The client is a leading retailer that operates over 1500 stores across Europe under multiple brands.

 
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Retail Outlets
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Data Sources
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Challenges

  • The client faced challenges with disparate on-premise data systems and did not have a consolidated view of their products performance.
  • The data warehouse currently runs reports in batch mode and takes up to 20 hours for report generation.
  • Needed a technology partner who can enable near real time reporting over a cloud based data lake.
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Solutions

  • Cognine worked with the client team to migrate the legacy data warehouse to Azure cloud to ensure agility and scalability of reporting architectures.
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Key Benefits

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E-Learning Platform Development

Client focus

Client is an education provider and wanted to enable online test taking for all students to better analyse results and enhance performance.

 
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Campuses on the portal
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Students take tests
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Users on the portal

Challenges

  • Client wanted an application (web and mobile) that would allow their students from multiple campuses to take tests online and the ability for faculty/parents/administration to review results and create a plan of action to improve individual performance of students.
  • Application needed to be built as per the industry standards of the country
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Solutions

  • Cognine spent a considerable amount of time with college administration to identify key requirements
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Key Benefits

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Healthcare Product Engineering

Client focus

Client is a healthcare service provider with a focus on bringing technology into small and midsize providers for digitizing patient visits and health records.

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Providers on the platform
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Medication transactions
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reduction in clicks and keystrokes
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Cloud Native

Challenges

  • Client had a product idea (web and mobile) to manage patient visits, medications and medical records for clinics and hospitals with a unique feature of smart data entry using proprietary state machine in prescriptions.
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Solutions

  • Cognine was involved in every phase of the product development starting from requirements discovery phase to deployment on cloud as the client did not have any technical team.
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Key Benefits

  • Rapid prototyping and feedback mechanisms from light house customers helped in incorporating some of the good to have features that were not part of initial planning process
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Healthcare

RPA solutions for Revenue Cycle Management

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Client provides practice management services to independent physician-owned practices and small-mid size hospital groups. It offers end-to-end RCM services to manage its revenue cycle operations including patient registration, insurance verification, billing, and medical documentation.

 
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person hours saved
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bots in production
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processes automated

Challenges

  • The client wanted to automate certain processes across pre-authorization and patient medical record submission.
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Solutions

  • Cognine has implemented process automation using Blue Prism.
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Key Benefits

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RPA solutions for 3PL provider

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Client is a leading North American provider of logistics technology and transportation management services for manufacturers, retailers, chemical and consumer packaged goods companies.

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Challenges

  • The client had been experiencing steady growth over the last 5 years. However a key concern going forward was, how to grab new market opportunities fast enough and press the accelerator on future growth.
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Solutions

  • Cognine has started RPA implementation with 2 bots across order management, freight forwarding and rate look ups. The bulky, repetitive, rule based processes across these areas served to be an ideal candidates for automation.
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Key Benefits

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Empowering Decision Making with Self-Service BI

Client focus

Client is a leading chemical manufacturer that operates in over 100 countries with manufacturing sites spread across the globe.

 
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manufacturing sites
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Challenges

  • The client had challenges with integrating data from different sources that is stored in multiple ERP systems, PLM systems and IoT systems.
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Solutions

  • Cognine implemented a data virtualization solution to integrate the data from various internal and analytical systems.
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Key Benefits

  • Improved efficiency of data integration and reporting between various teams resulted in lower lead time for decision making
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