As we approach the end of 2013 and welcome in 2014, some members of the Blue Ocean Systems team share their own business and personal achievements over the past 12 months as well as their plans for an even better 2014.
Arun Devan – Managing Director
My/Our biggest successes of 2013:
- Doubled our turnover from 2012 – grew our customer base
- Increased our capabilities to serve our market with a growing team
- Tapped on Design Thinking to drive our transformation to become a more innovative and productive company
- Won the 2nd prize in the SAP APJ Social Media Leaderboard across all SAP partner categories in the Asia Pacific region
- Streamlined our HR practices with the help of a HR Consultant
- Won the first SAP Business One HANA (B1H) project in Singapore
- Leading in Singapore with 3 ongoing SAP B1H projects. First B1H project in Singapore slated to Go Live by mid-Dec13.
- Improved customer support with a ticketing system and quicker responses
- Improved internal operations with support from a SMART consultant
My personal goals for 2014:
- Sustain good health and keep my weight loss in check
- Be more patient with my 11 year old dog (turning 12 in the new year)
- Sustainably grow our business
- Learn cool new stuff around SAP HANA
- Do cool stuff around SAP HANA
- Be calm. Be grateful.
- Looking forward to watching great movies and listening to great music
- Plan to scuba dive at some great locations
- Improve productivity at BOS
- Have fun with the family
- Sustain good working relationships with our partners
- Continue to delight our customers
Charlie Heng – Business Development Manager
“I had a chance meeting in 2013 with an angry customer who was extremely unhappy with the performance of the SAP Business One solution that was delivered as a cloud solution to them by a SAP partner. Apart from not fulfilling their specific user requirements, this partner had a tardy working relationship with this customer.
I was able to regain the confidence of this customer not to abandon SAP Business One for another ERP solution. Together with my team, we patiently demonstrated our core competence showing this customer why we are different from other partners. We explained why a cloud solution was not suitable for their business. Instead, we demonstrated the strengths of an on-premise solution for their comparison. In the end, we managed to earn the respect of this customer and they chose us to implement their SAP Business One HANA solution – in not just one company, but three!“
Bessy Hu – Business Development Manager
My biggest achievement of 2013:
“I realised I cannot blame anyone else for my own failure.”
My personal goal for 2014:
“Have more fun, see and enjoy more beauty of life, be a good listener. Have an integral life that balances my dream.“
Brenda Tan – Inside Sales
My biggest achievement of 2013:
“I noticed that there are many SMEs having difficulty in keeping up with the competition and taking risks. They are still afraid of changes and tend to be fickle-minded. I have been able to convince them to plan for change and this continues to be a challenging task and achievement for me.“
My personal goal for 2013:
“To explore new market segments and have a more client-centric approach to achieve service excellence within my ability.“
Shanthi Chandrasekar – Project Manager
My biggest success of 2013:
“Getting Partner Quality Accreditation from SAP for our quality standards in executing projects. I am excited about this, since meeting the accreditation criteria was not that easy. It spans across all the phases of a project – like project methodology, quality plan, risk management, customer satisfaction and additional quality measures taken in projects. We got a good score and the prestigious Quality Accreditation from SAP, so it is memorable for me.“
My personal goal for 2014:
“I want to do couple of courses from MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), as I see it as a great opportunity to learn at my own pace and it is FREE! I also want to be disciplined with my yoga practice sessions, as this will increase my energy levels and it gives good flexibility.“
Alfred Eu – SAP Business One Consultant
My biggest successes of 2013:
“I helped with the point-of-sale training portion of a project involving retail. I also overcame some challenging training situations where the participants lacked the sufficient skills or aptitude to pick up and maintain new technology – through patience and doing things in different ways to meet different needs, we were able to achieve success.
My goals for 2014:
“I plan for a more balanced approach when working on systems projects. I also want to extend my personal and professional development to help those with technical and non-technical skills to achieve better project delivery.”
Tan Keng Oon – Senior SAP Consultant
My biggest achievement/success of 2013:
“I completed the implementation project of SAP Business One for an investments holding company which was stopped abruptly by their senior management in early 2012. The project was subsequently revived in the second half of 2013.They have a complex group structure and therefore, are very demanding in their accounting function.“
My personal goal for 2014:
“I want to live a simple, less stressful and healthy life to be happy.”
Uma Rakesh – SAP Business One Consultant
2013 achievements:
“I really cannot say I have achieved anything big, but one thing is there, I joined the BOS team on April 1st and now its almost eight months into my Blue Ocean journey. Every day is a new learning curve, and I am happy for it; I am learning and that itself is an achievement for me.”
2014 goals: “Be independent, try some new cooking!”
M. Sundararaja Perumal (Raja) – Senior SAP Business One Consultant
My biggest achievements of 2013:
“After a long time I faced a very insecure customer. I did my best to help them go live and succeeded in two group companies out of three. It was one of the shortest implementation roll outs in my experience, which helped to retain the customer’s confidence in BOS. The third company we are trying to make live together with the team and expertise from Spain, which is a great support to us. From this customer, I have been able to develop the important soft skill to say NO in a more polite way. Learning about SAP HANA and its power of extraction and presentation is exciting like the Prezi, but the configuration and installation is not an easy task. A few of our customers will be going live with HANA in 2014 and I am happy that I am also contributing to this success.”
My personal goal for 2014:
“I need to control my anger to help me to maintain good health.“
Lisa Covarrubias – SAP Business One Consultant
My biggest achievements of 2013:
“I had the opportunity to work within our end-user environment and when I was with another SAP vendor I also took on a slightly different role – this was a real challenge for me to start implementing a project on my own and doing the pre-sales activity. Nevertheless, I believe I was able to perform and deliver the requirements well. And that I can say was one of my biggest achievements for this year.”
My personal goal for 2014:
“I would like to have further advancement in 2014 that would improve my competency in my current role, and to give more business to our fast growing company. But at the same time I would also like to have better time management to be able to spend more quality time with my family.“
Yang Lay Chin – Senior SAP Consultant
My biggest achievements of 2013:
“I was able to manage my time and complete several projects that came in almost at the same time successfully. I am thankful to have colleagues who supported me while my schedule was so full.“
My personal goal for 2013:
“For me, the year 2014 should be a health conscious year, as I am no longer young! I want to be more healthy and do some kind of exercise at least twice per week, and sleep before 11pm! I should also learn to cook too to avoid consuming too much “Ajinomoto” (take out food). But this is a tough one for me, so I think I should make “cooking” a personal goal for Year 2015!“
Wishing all of our readers, customers, partners and colleagues a joyful and peaceful festive season – we look forward to working with you in 2014!
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