The company wanted Ephlux to provide an actionable roadmap for the research, architecture, design and development of a commodity exchange options-trading platform. The engagement aimed at a long-term initiative to come up with a product suite of various trading applications to be offered to the individual traders, hedgers and corporate traders on subscription-based and stand-alone models.

Ephlux performed a detailed research of the US commodity options trade, Chicago Board Of Trade, various technology APIs and products available in the market and chalked out an agile implementation strategy which was brought to life in subsequent months.

The customer wanted to get a commodity future options trading platform integrated with Chicago Board of Trade and other exchanges through a 3rd party data feed provider.

The platform was to provide the client and its customers with tools to show real-time market feeds in order to help them make timely sale/purchase decisions. The need in the early phase was to show and report the market feeds in various customizable formats and charts. Another key challenge was to provide the individual traders, hedgers and corporate traders the possibility of conducting simplified as well as highly complex analytics; all within the same set of tools with integrated software modules.

In the later phases, the software needed a web-based centralized registration module as well as online trading facilities to allow the client and its customers to future-trade using the software primarily on Chicago Board of Trade by using various vendor’s trading APIs.

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Peace everyone. This one is a departure from my usual questions, but important nevertheless.

How many times have we heard ourselves saying “Yes sir” to a client? Is the client always right Customer is always right(which indirectly implies that all clients are flawless gods)? Or do we just say so to placate our endless frustration, caused by treating clients like infants - getting them anything and everything that they ask for, ASAP.

When you do agree with your clients (which is most of the time), do you actually believe that have a point to what they put forward? Or is it simply because ‘they’ are the ones holding the ‘benjamins’?

While most people may not agree to the blatant reality of these statements, it is true that “client cosmetics” have become an important (and one of the most well paid) value additions to the service industry.

On a more serious note, how do you deal with this age old misconception of “the all knowing, all powerful” client, within your sphere of influence. How do you prioritize between ‘quality of service’ and ‘client comfort levels’. Which is more important to you, and why?

What Will the World Do with More Search Engines?

I was going through a very interesting article on Time by Douglas McIntyre about the world of search engines as Microsoft has recently called its search engine project “Kumo.”

Microsoft argues that if its search engine brings back more relevant results than Google or Yahoo! that people will eventually migrate to the “best” product. That may not be true. Google has become a habit for more than two-thirds of the people. Kumo may be just as good as Google, although the largest search engine keeps improving and adding to its functions. It is far too early to tell whether Microsoft can pick up a single new user even if its product is 99% as good as Google in the eyes of most people.

A cult has developed around Google, just as it has around Apple and its Mac and iPhone products. Loyalty is not always the by-product of function, although function often creates loyalty. Search is facing the same problem as the chip business. Intel and AMD make semiconductors that are so powerful that very few PC buyers can use all of their computational power.

Upgrading to a more powerful processor does not mean much to people who cannot tell the difference. That leaves a few corps and ppl who play complex video games as the only discriminating buyers of PCs with ultra-powerful processors.

Just 3-4 years ago, the difference between one generation of semiconductor and another meant something to the casual PC user. The chips are too good now, almost no one cares that a new Intel product can make 1 billion computations a second.

At Ephlux our team of management consultants equipped with state-of-the art technology, process engineering and market knowledge devise innovative plans and agile outsourcing strategies to suite your business objectives and customer demands.

Our consultants bring leadership attitude, objectivity, competence, agility and vast experience across range of industries to incite action based on agile IT and BPO strategies.

Agile Management for the Disruptive Age
Contemporary organizational life is inordinately complex, intertwined with technological and strategic innovations, diverse workforce, competitive and volatile market landscape and demanding customers.

Indeed, many managers find themselves in a rut as to what tools and processes to employ at times. What decisions to take given a short time span and limited knowledge? Most managers are hesitant to seek external help; simply because they see it as a failure on their part and a waste of resources.

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Agile processes utilize self-organizing teams to mange the complexity inherent in systems development projects. A team of individuals is formed. They systematize themselves into a team in response to the pressure of a deadline.

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