As I sit down to write my first blog for Sierra Atlantic, I’m glad that I have pleasant things to share. The market is showing encouraging signs of recovery. The Sierra Atlantic brand is enjoying greater recognition worldwide. We won significant new accounts – in North America, Europe, and Asia. Our positions and revenue at current accounts is expanding. BankON, a straight-through transaction, won recognitions and customers right away. Strategically, we’re in a strong position to make acquisitions to strengthen our areas of focus or consolidate our positions. In the coming days, we’ll tell you more about our recent acquisition of Baytree Associates.

Since founding Sierra Atlantic in 1993, we built a strong foundation represented by our financial strength, our pool of talent that includes a world class management team, and a culture of innovation. One of the contributing factors to our stability is the deep relationships we have formed with our customers. A significant source of our revenue is from our lateral growth within accounts. We have focused on being an Oracle service provider of excellence to medium and large-sized companies in a few chosen sectors and, over the years, we have built a reputation for our expertise and the quality of our work in both IT services and outsourced product development.

Our fundamental, organic growth has always been strong and we built a culture and the processes that ensure the integration of the acquired companies into a whole. I believe it is very critical for a medium sized company to have a culture that encourages a strong sense of identity, ownership, and innovation. This is one of the traits that distinguish us from other outsourcing service providers and helps cultivate trusted relationships with our customers, partners, and within our company. This blog is another vehicle of communication that can help us in that effort and I’ll try to stay in touch with you through this.

Join us Tuesday, April 27^th at 10:00 am PT/1:00 pm ET

Clopay, the nation’s largest manufacturer of residential garage doors, will discuss being one of the first early adapters to ‘take the plunge’ and upgrade to Oracle E-Business Suite R12. You’ll hear about the pros, cons, and lessons learned from Clopay’s Vice President of Information Technology. What better ways than to hear from a peer, asks questions, and get his advice prior to your upgrade? Click here to attend this live webinar.

Hi Everyone! BankON™ is Sierra Atlantic’s hot new corporate ERP-to-bank integration / mapping software.

Let me introduce the BankON™ management team at Sierra Atlantic:
- Phil Hodsdon – GM Banking & Financial Services
- Michael Griffiths – VP Sales
- Patricia Lowery – Director Product Marketing, BankON™
- Ramesh Revuru – AVP, Product Development, BankON™

Come meet us at the NACHA Payments Conference in Seattle from April 25 thru 28.

While at the conference, visit the BankON™ Team at Booth #736 for an opportunity to win a Taylor Made Burner Titanium Driver, courtesy of Sierra Atlantic and BankON™!

Jack Dorsey, Founder of Twitter, is the keynote speaker at the Conference. For more information, go to http://payments.nacha.org.

And for more information on BankON™, go to www.sierraatlantic.com/bankon.

If you read the blog and will be at the Conference, introduce yourself to me and say “ISO20022″ to double your odds of winning the driver.

Looking forward to meeting everyone!

Thanks -
Phil Hodsdon

Tools: Multishoring & Valuesourcing

As the world is slowly emerging out of economic downturn, the question lingers on everyone’s mind is “What is next”?. While a set of people are busy validating the ‘revival reality’, I thought it is time to look at some trends that could potentially change the landscape of business models. The large volume outsourcings that have triggered a major outsourcing wave during Y2K and .com wave have not only disappeared but the value gaps are widening with no proper model to support. Developed economies such as US & Europe are not only focused on commodity and low cost alternatives to sustain growth and also starving to create bandwidth for innovation. The large scale outsourcing of IT services and BPOs have virtually created new industries in India, China and other destinations in Eastern Europe and also in Latin America. The GDP growth and stronger economies in Emerging markets have created new markets for corporations in North America. It is hard to ignore these trends for a economy which needs to recover to year 2000 level and then progress from there.

I believe companies will look at ‘multishoring’ in a value and growth expansion context as opposed to volume and cost basis. Service providers need to focus on vertical solutions that could potentially solve ‘global expansion’ problems to sustain growth. The traditional offshore players with large number of people presence in emerging markets, interestingly needs to invest in “building value drivers” (both people & solutions) in developed economies such as Europe & US. In the coming years corporations will have to focus on more ‘Internet & mobile retailing’ as well as ‘vertical solutions’ that can help them to grow globally. If this trend is adopted by both SMB and Fortune 1000 companies as a sustenance strategy, it will trigger next wave of outsourcing which I would like to call its as “valuesourcing”. Service providers irrespective of their size needs to build on

(a) Global delivery capabilities
(b) Vertical Solutions that can help companies to grow rapidly & globally
(c) “Valuesourcing” with right blend of people & solutions.

I am sure every corporation in North America and Europe will ask themselves this question at some point of time in the next 10 years (2010 – 2020). “How can we sell our products and services through internet and also serve & expand into global markets”. US & Europe markets will re-tool its people and systems to ride on this wave. If M&A strategies focus on ‘valuesourcing’ and they will trigger job creation to support global expansion as opposed to downsizing. Well managed and result oriented companies will pursue more acquisitions to reach this trend.

“In my opinion, it is the brand that makes more business sense as opposed to shifting too much toward one particular shore”.

Welcome to the official Sierra Atlantic blog! Let’s get to know each other, shall we?

You may recognize us as one of many things:  an Oracle partner (and Platinum, at that!), a global services provider, a source for product development…but it’s time to take our relationship to the next level. Think of it as the next logical step in our information-sharing courtship…

Not to worry; we’ll take it slowly. We’ll introduce you to our talented array of executives, offer a glimpse into our various business units, and share a little piece of what life is like as a Sierran. Sound like fun? We think so too!

Perhaps Bogart said it best:  “…I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”