Expert Software Consulting Services

Situation/Problem:

• Client: Large European bank
• Deal: 100+ applications across various tech stacks were to be transitioned from current vendor and internal customer teams
• Initial 6-months were to be T&M and then gradual fixed price conversions.
• Manu was the delivery head working at the software services organization and was engaged to anchor the deal from delivery perspective when the deal team got stuck.

Observation:

• Customer's problems needed intelligent solutions to build confidence.
• Different stakeholders had to be managed differently

Solution:

1. An approach similar to what I have now built as "Context dip-stick" tool was very important in order to manage the diverse set of senior stakeholders and their expectations. Organizational dynamics, likes-dislikes of specific stakeholders, their specific KPIs, their vocabulary & historical data analysis. Everything was needed.
2. An approach similar to what I have now built as "Customer Aha! Moment model" was used to identify specific solutions to the problems – this included resourcing issues, critical applications handling, transition approaches, global delivery model, cost optimization while catering to fluctuation demands, knowledge management and so on.

The entire proposal was very specific and customized with hardly any copy-paste from other proposals.

Results:

• With each conversation, the customer confidence grew.
• They really liked specific solutions to each of their problems.
• They liked how we quantified everything including transition progress.
• They liked the clarity and objectivity in all our approaches.
• And we won the $100+ mil deal that was once seen as impossible

Situation/Lead:

• Client: One of the largest US based financial services customer
• Manu was working as Head of Delivery for a software company and was visiting the customer in the Americas region.
• Sales head for the sub-region in Americas was introducing Manu to the customer Senior VP as it was the first meeting after Manu took up the role.
• Sales head asked the SVP if there were any work opportunities to which he answered nicely that couple of roles might be there but will take time

Observation:

• Sales mindset with no heed to what customer wants and needs.
• Customer seemed less interested

Solution:

Shun sales mindset and adopt an approach similar to what I have now built as "Context dip-stick" tool: I interjected and said that- Our intent was to actually understand the pain-points and roadmap; that's all.

And I added a bit of context, based on the prep I had done (as per context dip-stick) on what I saw as clear pain points.

Result:

• This just changed the conversation. And he mentioned – We are also looking for strategic partners,who take interest in knowing us and solving for us.
• He immediately stopped the meeting and asked for 1.5 hours meeting in the afternoon.
• In the afternoon meeting, again, based on "Context dip-stick" based prep, I was able to discuss his portolio in detail and pain points – he was very happy to see our preparation.
• In 4 weeks, he visited us in India and opened 8 different workstreams for us. Our growth was accelerated even in the face of big budget cuts. as work was moved from others to us.

Situation/Problem:

• Client: A large global consulting company
• Project: Build a new, configurable AI-based software platform for predicting market demand for products
• Fixed price software project
• Manu was the software delivery head working at a large software services organization

Solution:

The software delivery approach used was similar to what I have built in the four tools (as in software delivery offering), the following two had the maximum impact:

1. "3D scoping matrix": to quantify the software development scope in agreement with customer. This quantified scope was built into the contract.
2. "3C Objective linking" was used to ensure very high motivation for the software development team and complete alignment with customer objective.

Results:

1. When the elaboration of software requirements happened during sprints, the quantification of scope was done again and compared against the original numbers in a very transparent way with the customer. So, whenever there was scope increase in one functional area, some scope was reduced from another area...thus maintaining equilibrium.
2. Team went the extra mile to cover for each other whenever required e.g. in a situation where, due to sudden spread of viral fever in the region, half of the team was off sick.
3. The project was a grand success and paved way for new opportunities.

Situation/Problem:

• Objective 1: Sales teams lacked time for contextual prep on new prospects, leading to low win rates.
• Objective 2: Need for in-depth understanding of GEN AI for both business applications and software development.

Solution:

• Leveraged existing research and GEN AI foundational models to understand inner workings of neural networks.
• Experienced 3 big Eureka moments, uncovering previously ignored aspects in existing Generative AI research.
• Applied Eureka moments to code generation using Gen AI as well.

Results:

• Achieved zero hallucinations, even for special cases.
• Boosted coding productivity by 10X.
• Eureka moments led to the discovery of a "secret sauce" for improved performance.