Arun Shankar[EC] As a specialised system integrator in AI, automation, big data and analytics, and other technologies, kindly describe your points of differentiation with other competitors and your core competence?
[Michael Halas] MAGNOOS is a value-added reseller and technology implementation specialised boutique company. Our core values are Clarity, Quality, Speed and Accuracy which are followed across all our Sales, Presales and mainly Implementation and Support functions. Competition is mainly trying to capture all opportunities and projects in the market, while MAGNOOS is a very focused, quality driven company.
We have managed to MAGnetise and employ the best available talent, locally in each of our operating markets. We use offshore resources wisely, only for scalability reasons and to complement the team members that are serving our customers onsite. MAGNOOS is able to deliver large scale programs, using mission critical AAA rated applications, running across the biggest Banking, Financial Institutions, Insurance, Telecommunication, Government and Retail enterprises in the Middle East.
[EC] What are the principal vendor solutions that MAGNOOS is using to build its implementation solutions and platforms? What has been the journey with these vendors in terms of building expertise and competency?
[Michael Halas] MAGNOOS has been traditionally using the best of breed available technologies in order to complement them with its own intellectual property and serve the market with customised solutions ready to be deployed across the largest enterprises. MAGNOOS has built solutions in three main journeys.
The Digital Service Management and Operations journey is being built on top of BMC Software, the Automation Journey on top of Automation Anywhere, while the Data Management, Analytics, Big Data, AI end to end journey on top of Informatica, Cloudera, Microstrategy and DataRobot.
MAGNOOS is a Platinum Partner, having strong expertise and competency, certified locally available resources and centres of excellence across all these principal suppliers.
[EC] What is the typical process of implementation that MAGNOOS follows with its end customers?
[Michael Halas] MAGNOOS is typically following the value addition approach while interacting with end customers. Our after sales practice is strong and customer success is our #1 priority. We have built our legacy on top of our reputation and successful implementations, which have resulted in tenths of happy customers.
Every time that MAGNOOS engages in a project, programme, the requirement gathering, and analysis phase takes the longest time of the project duration, in order to ensure that the requirements and pain points are all documented and will be properly addressed during project execution and build phase.
Once the high-level design and low-level design are being signed off by both customer and MAGNOOS PMO, then we proceed with careful steps to an agile methodology, building the blocks of the solution by using the expertise that we have from the pool of other successful implementations and the lessons learned throughout the decades of experience of our consultants.
This methodology allows the customers to feel the value and the results, ROI early enough in the journey, in order to justify the investment to the Board. User Acceptance Testing, UAT plays a vital role in our implementation methodology, since we respect that our solutions most of the times have a cultural impact apart from the technology progression impact to our end customers.
After successful completion of UAT phase, we conclude the implementations with the critical Go-Live phase which is always delivered onsite at our customer’s premises by our certified engineers, to ensure business continuity and smooth transition to the new solutions.
Post go-live, we are available 24×7 to support the new environments through dedicated L0, L1, L2 and L3 support centres, complemented by our offshore R&D department which takes care of all our innovations, which are developed based on our customer’s continuous comments which provide us with feedback on how to improve and adjust our solutions based on market’s needs.
[EC] In your opinion what are the principal pain points that end users have in the post pandemic phase in the area of AI, automation, big data and analytics and related areas?
[Michael Halas] In the post pandemic phase, we have been noticing an even bigger wave and push towards the areas of AI, automation, big data and analytics and related areas. Now, more than ever, enterprises and end users realised that manual efforts and operations, along with error prone human decision making, can no longer sustain.
The competitive advantage is coming only by understanding your biggest asset, which is your data and by taking advantage of the benefits of applying automation across the entire business functions.
However, these programs most of the times are being run in departmental level and are siloed. Furthermore, end users set high expectations from these programs that cannot be realistically met, since the basic prerequisites, like the quality of the data is not good. MAGNOOS has managed to come up with easily digestible use cases in the areas of RPA, AI and HyperIntelligence which can be simply deployed and demonstrate the value in a matter of weeks and not months, years. We understand that the adoption of AI is the principal pain point of the end users, so we have targeted entry level packages across all sectors.
[EC] What would be your suggestions for best practices for end users in the area of AI, automation, big data and analytics and related areas?
[Michael Halas] The best practice and MAGNOOS suggestion in these areas, is to allow consultants to guide end users by embracing the step-by-step approach, rather than the utopic big bang approach which may result in occasional project failures. This step-by-step approach will make sure that all dependencies are met before embarking to the AI and Automation journey.
The processes must be well defined, the data should be able to be properly integrated by any available structured and unstructured sources, a continuous data quality framework must be built, a Data Governance, Business Glossary and Metadata Management framework should be designed, before building the first AI use case.
The moment the foundation is built, then the enterprise customers will be able to enjoy the AI and Automation journeys by applying many use cases in a plug-and-play manner.
[EC] Kindly provide details of some use cases and success stories in the region?
[Michael Halas] MAGNOOS has managed to implement some strategic use cases and success stories in the region. With a major health insurance provider, MAGNOOS has been engaging the last decade by assisting with the adoption of the Data Management and Analytics journey from the very first baby steps up to the latest and modern use cases. Data are collected real time from multiple structured and unstructured data sources, data are being cleansed, governed, and consumed by internal and external users in a seamless way.
The provider has achieved to obtain a 360-degree view of its customers, suppliers, finance and asset data and is now moving to the level of enhancing the journey by adopting AI.
With a major telecommunication provider, many major banking customers and healthcare providers, MAGNOOS has managed to help them adopt Robotic Process Automation, RPA and Digital Workforce at an enterprise level and has re-engineered tens of processes by removing the error prone human intervention, while using robots and artificial intelligence instead.
Finally, in many Government entities, MAGNOOS has been working with Service Excellence and Customer Happiness departments to implement its Digital Service Management and Operations solutions. MAGNOOS has delivered a totally revamped Digital Workplace experience to end users across all department internally and has also posted the services to Government’s end users, which are eventually the citizens, resulting in a totally state of the art experience of Smart Services.
Snapshot
- MAGNOOS is a value-added reseller and technology implementation specialised boutique company.
- The Digital Service Management and Operations journey is being built on top of BMC Software.
- The Automation Journey is being built on top of Automation Anywhere.
- The Data Management, Analytics, Big Data, AI is being built on top of Informatica, Cloudera, Microstrategy and DataRobot.
- MAGNOOS is a Platinum Partner having certified locally available resources and centres of excellence across principal suppliers.
- Every time MAGNOOS engages in a project, programme, the requirement gathering, and analysis phase takes the longest time of the project.
- User Acceptance Testing plays a vital role in our implementation methodology.
- Competitive advantage comes by understanding the biggest asset, which is data and by taking advantage of the benefits of applying automation.
- The processes must be well defined, the data should be properly integrated by any available structured and unstructured sources.
- The best practice in these areas, is to allow consultants to guide end users by embracing the step-by-step approach.
