Mark Davis Joins Executive Team as Transportation Leader
Tulsa, OK – August 4, 2010 – Waterfield Energy is pleased to announce the appointment of Mark Davis as Vice President – Transportation Products and Services, effective August 2, 2010. Mr. Davis takes over responsibility for gas gathering, intrastate and interstate gas transportation products, services, clients, and staff.
Mr. Davis is an energy and transportation industry executive with over 27 years of experience in software, consulting and the energy business. Prior to joining Waterfield Energy, Mr. Davis was Director of Natural Gas Solutions at SolArc Inc., and was instrumental in the building of Quorum Business Solutions’ transportation products. Mr. Davis also worked at Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, Tennessee Gas Pipeline, Tenneco, ARKLA Gas, Louisiana Intrastate Gas, and Columbia Gulf serving in various roles. Mr. Davis has a bachelor’s degree & MBA from Our Lady of the Lake University.
“Bringing Mark Davis to the executive team was a key component of our growth strategy for Waterfield Energy,” said John Marino, President of Waterfield Technologies. “The rest of the board and I wholeheartedly endorsed bringing Mark in to lead our transportation practice. Waterfield Technologies is extremely pleased at the growth and success of our energy software affiliate, and adding Mark Davis solidifies our long-term strategy in midstream transportation.”
Pete Waldroop, CEO and President of Waterfield Energy, added, “Mark Davis is a tremendous addition to my executive team. His knowledge of the transportation business and his commitment to customer service are unequaled. Feedback from our clients has already been extremely positive.”
About Waterfield Energy Software
Based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Waterfield Energy provides software to the energy upstream, midstream, and transportation markets. Its employees are a mix of experienced energy and technical development resources, brought together to create world-class software for the dynamic energy industry. For more details, please visit www.waterfieldenergysoftware.com.
Read More
Tulsa, OK. — June 3, 2010 — Waterfield Energy is pleased to announce the appointment of Pete Waldroop as president and CEO, effective May 17, 2010.
Waldroop is an energy expert with more than 16 years of experience in the full-system lifecycle of software, process design/analysis and project management. He has worked extensively in upstream energy, midstream energy and in the transportation and marketing sectors. His client list has included Fortune 500 energy and utility companies from across the country.
Waldroop was previously a founding partner with Capitalize Consulting, a professional consulting services firm focused on the energy, pipeline, and utilities industries. He also previously was a founder and executive vice president of Quorum Business Solutions, an energy industry software provider. Formerly, Waldroop also was a consulting manager in Accenture’s Energy Solutions Group. He earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Oklahoma State University.
“We are extremely pleased to have Pete leading the energy software company. His deep experience in energy consulting and software are a great match for our team and product suite, and we expect Pete to grow the company significantly in coming years,” said John Marino, president of Waterfield Technologies. “The Waterfield family is committed to the growth of the energy software company, and bringing Pete to the company is just one of the many substantial investments we’ve made in this business.”
Waldroop echoed the sentiments, saying: “Waterfield Energy Software is providing an exciting opportunity for me to use my skills and background in a new way. I’m looking forward to this challenge.”
About Waterfield Energy Software
Based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Waterfield Energy provides software to the energy upstream, midstream, and transportation markets. Its employees are a mix of experienced energy and technical development resources, brought together to create world-class software for the dynamic energy industry. For more details, please visit waterfieldenergysoftware.com.
Read More
Waterfield Energy brings to the market an entire midstream energy suite of products. Based on a comprehensive gas processing solution which handles the complexities of virtually any gas processing plant, the suite provides comprehensive gas transaction management from custody transfer to plant tailgate. All processing allocation models and contract types are handled by the product. The suite also includes integrated accrual, budgeting and forecasting tools which can also easily be linked to other processing solutions.
For more information, see Waterfield Energy Software at waterfieldenergysoftware.com
Read More
OutSystems’ Award Program Recognizes Latest Agile Application Projects Delivered On Time, On Budget and With 100 Percent User Adoption
SAN RAMON, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–OutSystems:
OutSystems, provider of the industry-leading Agile Platform application development environment, announced today three new winners of the Outsystems’ Agility Award, recognizing accomplishments for projects that were delivered following an Agile process and exhibited real business benefit.
The winning companies are Waterfield Technologies, TNT Express and their systems integrator COOLProfs, and Turismo de Portugal and their systems integrator Normatica.
The Agility Award program was launched at the end of May 2009. The awards are submission-based and recognize teams and organizations who have fully embraced Agile methodologies and iterative, user-oriented development to deliver application projects on time, on budget and with 100 percent user adoption.
In the spirit of Agile, the Agility Awards will be given on an on-going, monthly basis. For a list of all award winners visit http://www.outsystems.com/goto/agilityaward.
Agility Award Winning Projects and Supporting Quotes
Waterfield Technologies, Online Banking Real Time Account Creation & Funding Project: Waterfield Technologies used the OutSystems Agile Platform to develop an application for the real time collection, vetting, funding and opening of accounts for a bank, credit union or other financial services provider. The system interfaces with five external databases and systems for immediate online processing of bank accounts as a result of online or direct mail marketing. The application allows the bank to quickly convert interested prospects into bank customers by simplifying the traditional application process used by many banks which often results in hours of offline processing and review and days of customer delay. Delivered in 12 weeks in 4 sprints.
“Utilizing OutSystems’ Agile Platform and the agile methodology allowed a broader range of participants from the bank’s perspective to be involved in the development process, thereby creating a more effective application once it reached production. Being able to rapidly respond to unforeseen obstacles and the rapidly evolving fraud landscape was essential in the development of this system. Our ability to continue to evolve the application and respond to business change is a testament to the overall effectiveness of the Agile Platform.” – John Marino, President of Waterfield Technologies
TNT Express and their systems integrator, COOLProfs, for the GARD project: The GARD project provides a structured working environment that streamlines and enhances business retention and the development of TNT’s portfolio of global customers. GARD will play a key role in securing TNT’s Global Accounts revenue, which accounts for around 20 percent of the total TNT Express revenue. GARD will also ensure that the global resource pool of contract managers shares best practices and focuses its efforts on the most important issues. Delivered in 7 weeks in 3 sprints.
“The Agile methodology, employed by COOLProfs to build GARD, allowed they system’s key stakeholders, Contract Managers at TNT Global Account Management, to fully participate in the development of a tool which enables them to pool their extensive knowledge and experience towards supporting the key business processes; facilitating account retention and development.” – Hugo Koppelaars, solutions and commercial global account management director at TNT Express.
Turismo de Portugal and their systems integrator, Normatica, for the School Management System project: The SIMPLEX School Management System is a next generation school management solution providing an interactive community portal for stakeholders (management, administration, teachers and students) to enhance the efficiency of school administration and improve resource optimization. The platform covers a school’s diverse operations including Student Management, Class Management, Trainer Management, Course Management, School Facility Management, Meal Plan Management, Scholarship Management and Student Application Management. Delivered in 20 weeks in 6 sprints.
“The agile methodology has enabled great stakeholder alignment and has reduced the traditional distrust that exists in technology projects following a waterfall model. The new School Platform has simplified the administration processes at 17 different Schools of Hospitality and Tourism allowing the staff to focus on excellent education.” – Hugo Sousa, IT Director at Turismo de Portugal.
OutSystems Supporting Quote
“This quarter’s winning applications show the speed and agility that can be obtained using the Agile Platform,” said Mike Jones, agile evangelist and vice president of marketing at OutSystems.
About OutSystems
OutSystems’ Agile Platform is used by IT teams around the world to rapidly develop and manage flexible web applications and business processes using agile methodologies. The integrated platform unifies the two life-cycles of application development and business process management within a single, powerful environment—enabling the automation of business processes and delivery of flexible web applications that are built for continuous change.
Companies use the Agile Platform to integrate, develop, deploy, monitor and change web apps and business processes—delivering business value in weeks rather than months or years.
Introduced in 2001, with over 6,500 installations, OutSystems’ Agile Platform has been honored with multiple CODiE and JOLT awards and is supported by an active community of more than 1,700 developers, 500 certified practitioners and over 50 implementation partners. Its free Community Edition is also available at http://www.outsystems.com/download.
Read More
Nuance Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: NUAN), today announced significant advancements in its strategic Natural Language Processing (NLP) initiative for the healthcare industry. Expanding upon its existing technological capabilities and team of health information technology (HIT) experts, Nuance, a market leader in speech-driven clinical documentation and communication, will deliver breakthrough NLP-powered clinical documentation solutions to help analyze, structure and utilize the more than 80 percent of unstructured clinical documentation that exists in the healthcare industry today.
By empowering healthcare organizations to “unlock” unstructured clinical documentation, sometimes referred to as the “narrative blob,” Nuance’s NLP solutions will enable the extraction of clinically relevant data that would otherwise be impossible to access, unless done manually by humans. With this access, healthcare organizations will increase the amount of meaningful data that can be used for clinical decision making, leading to improved patient care and a reduction in overall healthcare costs. Furthermore, by helping collect and report on various diagnostic, quality and safety measures, Nuance will help healthcare organizations advance efforts to qualify for Meaningful Use reimbursements associated with certified electronic health record (EHR) technology, as outlined in the HITECH Act.
In addition to significant internal NLP research and development investments, Nuance has acquired key technologies and researchers from Language and Computing, Inc. (L&C), a pioneering developer of clinical narrative processing technology. Nuance has also formed a strategic partnership with Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), which will enable Nuance to incorporate MGH’s proven NLP solution, Smart Dictation, into its own solution portfolio for the healthcare market.
“Natural Language Processing adds meaning to the clinical narrative, so that clinicians’ spoken words are not simply transformed into text, but can be used to create meaningful clinical data that can be inserted into an EHR or other data repositories without forcing doctors to document via time consuming and restrictive point-and-click templates,” said John Shagoury, executive vice president for Healthcare, Nuance. “By adding these new Natural Language Processing technologies and capabilities, Nuance has advanced its commitment to improve the clinical documentation process for healthcare organizations by extending the power of our speech-driven solutions that cater to both to clinicians’ documentation preferences and provider organizations’ need to create structured data within their EHRs.”
By integrating L&C’s NLP technologies into its healthcare portfolio, Nuance will enhance its ability to address the structured data management challenges in healthcare with its award winning line of clinical documentation solutions including Dragon Medical, eScription and Dictaphone Enterprise Speech System. With these integrated technologies, Nuance will provide solutions to the healthcare market that enable advanced clinical data warehousing, clinical decision support, data mining, coding for billing and disease management. L&C’s powerful technologies include a comprehensive medical knowledge base that is specifically designed to extract clinically relevant and discrete data from unstructured medical documentation. L&C technology is currently deployed at major healthcare institutions, including Kaiser Permanente and Ochsner.
As part of Nuance’s broad partnership with MGH, Nuance will exclusively license Smart Dictation NLP, a pioneering system that was developed by the MGH Lab of Computer Science, which is currently being used by MGH physicians to automatically extract key data elements from narrative dictations and populate the EHR. Nuance will leverage key capabilities of this technology alongside its full portfolio of NLP and speech-driven clinical documentation solutions to help healthcare organizations convert unstructured text into a structured, digital and interoperable format that contains extracted data elements for a variety of applications.
To further support its mission associated with NLP development and its goal of maintaining the important clinician narrative in EHRs, Nuance has joined the Health Story Project, a collaboration of healthcare vendors, providers and associations. The Health Story Project believes clinical documentation that includes the physician narrative is crucial to facilitate the electronic exchange of comprehensive health information and should be defined as part of Meaningful Use criteria. Additionally, with this group, which holds an Associate Charter Agreement with Health Level Seven (HL7), Nuance will contribute to the development and support of the HL7 Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) standards to enhance the flow of clinical information between narrative dictations and the EHR.
Read More
CINCINNATI & NEW YORK, Mar 11, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Convergys Corporation (CVG 12.56, +0.29, +2.36%), a global leader in relationship management, announced today that Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Magazine selected it as a Service Winner in the Outsourcing category.
CRM Magazine is a leading publication of the customer relationship management (CRM) industry. Recognizing how the economic climate helped drive service as a significant differentiator, CRM magazine’s annual CRM Service Awards honor the vendors, consultants, and end-user companies focused on customer experiences through the integration of people, processes, and technologies.
Citing Convergys’ excellent reputation in the marketplace, innovative roadmap, and overall value proposition, CRM announced the winners in the “2010 Service Awards” March issue — its seventh annual review of industry innovation and success.
CRM Magazine has previously recognized Convergys in the Outsourcing category in 2006, 2007, and 2008.
CRM Magazine selects its service winners based on a proprietary selection formula that includes industry analyst ratings for customer satisfaction, depth of functionality, and company direction.
“We are honored to be recognized once again by CRM Magazine as the winner in the Outsourcing category,” said Andrea Ayers, Convergys President, Customer Management. “This recognition is a testament to the strength of our dedicated contact center agents across the globe. Convergys is committed to providing a superior service experience to our clients and their customers through our agent-assisted and self-service solutions, and this award solidifies that commitment.”
“CRM Magazine is pleased to present the 2010 CRM Service Awards to those companies and individuals raising the bar in service-related customer relationship initiatives. These efforts are helping companies streamline business processes, maximize profitability, and provide more value to customers,” said David Myron, editorial director of CRM Magazine. “Congratulations to this year’s award recipients. May they continue to raise the standard of CRM excellence.”
Convergys Customer Solutions optimize everyday interactions throughout our clients’ enterprises — turning the customer experience into a strategic differentiator. As a single-source provider of self-service, agent-assisted, and proactive care, Convergys combines consulting, innovative technology, and agent-assisted services to optimize the customer experience and strengthen customer relationships. Through the provision of outsourcing services or improvements to an in-house contact center, Convergys helps its clients build more effective relationships with their customers.
About Convergys
Convergys Corporation (CVG 12.56, +0.29, +2.36%) is a global leader in relationship management. We provide solutions that drive more value from the relationships our clients have with their customers and employees. Convergys turns these everyday interactions into a source of profit and strategic advantage for our clients.
For more than 30 years, our unique combination of domain expertise, operational excellence, and innovative technologies has delivered process improvement and actionable business insight to clients that now span more than 70 countries and 35 languages.
Convergys, a Fortune Most Admired Company for nine consecutive years, has approximately 70,000 employees in 82 customer contact centers and other facilities in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and our global headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio. For more information, visit www.convergys.com
(Convergys and the Convergys logo are registered trademarks of Convergys Corporation.)
Read More
OutSystems announced the latest release of their 5.0 Agile platform last week.
Here’s the post from their blog regarding the release, its new features and some of the product details.
Give us a call to schedule a demo of the software or let us know if we can help you get a version downloaded and setup in your environment, at no cost!
From OutSystems.com:
In this version we’re taking agile a step further; not only are we supporting the entire application lifecycle management for web applications, we also added support for IT teams to rapidly develop business processes using agile methodologies.
Traditionally, business process development was done at a different pace using different tools than IT used for application development. However, one of the biggest challenges facing the business process world is the integration of business processes with applications; which meant one of them was always waiting for the other. And, in the case of our customers who already use the Agile Platform, web application development was happening faster than business processes development.
With version 5.0 of the Agile Platform, we have closed that gap! Using the new Business Process Technology capabilities of the platform, IT teams can develop business processes totally integrated with web applications in an agile manner. All artifacts that the Agile Platform provides for Web Application development – like TrueChange technology, 1 Click-Publishing, Real Time Monitoring, and so on – are also available for business process development.
To develop this new capability, the OutSystems R&D team partnered with one of our customers, Van Ameyde, to design and implement this capability. Van Ameyde uses business processes intensively for insurance claims processing and has very heavy change demands for those processes. Customer participation has been key to the development of the new 5.0 functionality, and we believe that it led to a pragmatic implementation of Business Process Technology that will allow IT teams to fulfill the needs of the business from a process perspective, as fast as they have been doing for web applications with the Agile Platform.
Along with Business Process Technology, version 5.0 includes many other improvements that will make developers a lot more productive. If you’re already using the Agile Platform, check the videos of some of the improvements we made to the platform. If you want to give it a try for yourself, the best thing to do is download the (free) Community Edition and try out the new capabilities of the platform.
Read More
We stumbled upon an older article from a CRM publication this week that makes some points that remain key problems for the customer service industry. Though the article was written in 2006, it’s shocking to realize how few businesses are focused on solving these issues and how few technology solutions have emerged with a focus on these kinds of problems.
After you read the article, give us a call, we believe Convergy’s Policy Management Suite is the perfect fit in businesses today where customers are getting mixed, contradictory, service prohibitory, messages…..
Here’s a great excerpt:
Stranger Than Fiction (This Stuff Really Happened)
An automotive company began to charge customers for loaner cars regardless of what car they had purchased, how old or new the vehicle was, or how many vehicles the customer had purchased. An insurance company cancelled a customer’s service for non-payment, and then solicited that customer the next day for a different product. A packaged goods company sent out empty boxes to customers who had purchased out-of-stock products and then sent the product later under separate cover. Each of these occurred as the outcome of separate silo objectives intersecting and falling in an awkward heap on customers’ laps.
This is the gift we give our customers every day. They receive the defaulted experiences that come together in a dimwitted chain of events that has the customer wondering “Do they talk to each other?” “What are they thinking?” and “Why do I have to take this anymore?”
**********************************
Five Ways to Keep Your Customers
What customers really want is simple, and that is for companies to keep their problems to themselves, and to provide a seamless experience to them when they call, contact, communicate, or go to buy something. To stop customers from running out your door, begin to do these things:
1. Eliminate the customer obstacle course. We deliver discontinuity in the experience where the organizational breaks exist. It is in these hand-offs that customer failures occur, in this customer Bermuda triangle that we’ve created. Simplify the road map for customers. Make it clear for them how they can do business with you in a way that’s actually beneficial to them.
2. Desilo your Web site. Our Web sites are often the cobbled together parts created separately by each company division. Figure out collectively how you will serve customers on your Web site and deliver an on-purpose brand experience.
3. FIX (really) the top-10 issues bugging customers. You can probably recite the biggest customer issues right now. Do something about them. Customers read the lack of action as lack of caring and certainly lack of respect. We all overthink what the customer effort should be. Start by striking these top-10 things from your corporate wide to-do list.
4. Help the front line to listen. It has been programmed to get a certain output. Sometimes this means closing the call within a time frame, and often it includes some kind of cross- or upsell goal. It may be to meet with a quota of customers in a certain time period. Let them be human, give them the skills for listening and understanding, and help the front line deliver to the customers based on their needs.
5. Deliver what you promise. The customers have to strong arm their way through the corporate maze just to get basic things accomplished. They’re exhausted from the wrestling match, they’re annoyed, and they’re telling everyone they know. And, oh by the way–when they get the chance, they’re walking.
You can read the full article here
Read More
Great post from OutSystems regarding the use of Agile and Scrum in the application development of Fly.com.
The post summarizes a recent webcast from Max Rayner the CTO of TravelZoo.
Travel Zoo is travel publisher with 18 million subscribers and fly.com is an online app that helps you find the exact match to your air travel needs. During the webcast Max discussed the problem space, their agile approach, the innovative metasearch engine, how they managed a distributed team, challenges, key learnings and reasons for their success.
At the core, we are often asked about using Agile in “real world” scenarios. The thinking behind the question is likely based on the presumption that Agile works best for internal, low volume applications. Its great to see TravelZoo and Fly.com see so much success with the approach and the software tool.
The full, original post is located here.
Read More
OutSystems recently posted the following bit regarding good sources of introductory information on Agile practices and Agile methodology. We thought you would find useful:
In no particular order:
- Jutta Eckstein’s book – Agile Development in the Large
- Mitch Lacey & Associates – for their Blog + PDF Decks
- Juergen Appelo’s blog “Noop.nl“
- James Shore’s Blog “The Art of Agile“
- Google Tech Talks: Elisabeth Hendrickson on Agile Testing
- Craig Larman’s book “Agile & Iterative Development“
- Dan North’s Blog “Introducing BDD“
- James Bach’s resources (blog, book, pdf & articles) on Exploratory Testing
- Last but not least, Rodrigo Coutinho’s video on “The Secret of Agile Speed”
Read More
