CIO LOOK oversees the Global Company Leaders in Inspiring Business Leaders Making a Difference, who share their experiences, achievements, and challenges.

1. September 2019www.ciolook.com
Ruslan
Desyatnikov
When Passion and Courage Personify Altogether
Inspiring
Business
Leaders Making
a Difference
2019
We are experts each
of the QA service verticals,
so our services aren’t just
words on a screen.
Women Empower
Dynamics of Women Participation in
the Ever-changing Modern Workforce
Editor’s Desk
The Journey to
Self-Discovery
Chalk Talk
Entrepreneurship Going Beyond the
Comfort of Safety to Make Larger Impact

4. Exceptional Traits Possessed
by every Leader
uccessful business leaders have a keen understanding
Sand the ability to see the market forces affecting their
industry. They are responsible for developing a team
of best and the brightest minds, and together drive
businesses to greater heights. And, their role is to maximize
successes and to keep companies alive & thrilling through
their firm leadership. A Leader's own experiences help him
to take the company to the dream vision. The magic behind
achieving this success is sometimes simple appreciation,
and understanding the team requirements.
A successful business leader does not need to be a creative
genius, but he needs to be able to communicate and
motivate the employees. Such successful leaders with the
best and bright mind in inspiring business and making a
difference in the world are Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard
Branson, Steve Jobs, Susan Wojcicki, and Warren Buffett.
Be it the world of eCommerce, Real Estate, Health Care, or
ERP, these leaders face a world of opportunity to evolve,
with success coming from innovation.
As technology becomes more and more intrinsic in our
everyday lives, increasing the value has acquired a growing
relevance in modern societies. At the core, no leader or
company is immune from the force of technological change.
Leaders must be open to new ideas, and innovations and
communicate them to employees and peers. They must be
EDITOR’S NOTE

5. creative and one that can navigate within a stressful environment without creating additional
stress by reacting impulsively.
A good leader rises to the challenges of the business crisis with a good combination of teamwork,
the right organization, and the appropriate style of leadership. During such a situation, a visionary
leader looks for the best people available for his/her team, set priorities, and start to deal with the
most important issues as they occur.
Organizations across sectors understand the importance of leadership skills in their workforce as
they have the ability to help change the world for the better. It proves as a motivation for a leader
to work with these responsibilities, as they are involved with people's demands and needs. With
one such inspiration, CIO LOOK oversees the Global Company Leaders in “Inspiring Business
Leaders Making a Difference”, who share their experiences, achievements, and challenges.
Here is the cover, featuring the Founder & CEO of QA Mentor, Ruslan Desyatnikov. The journey
to success often starts with struggles accompanied by some unpredictable situations. In order to
climb the ladder, one has to cope with various failures and face the inevitable circumstances. The
entrepreneurial journey of Ruslan, exemplifies such a struggling dilemma. Emphasizing the courage
to pursue passion, CIO Look brings to you the triumphant journey of an avid entrepreneur, Ruslan
and many others.
Enjoy the read...
INSPIRING BUSINESS
Making a Difference 2019
L DE S
Sourabh More

6. 18
Elena Kyria
Finding Exceptional Talent
24
Marc Rippen
Striving to Save and Improve
the Lives of Diabetics
32
Mirna Sleiman
A Leader Destined to Disrupt
the Digital Transformation
40
Nicole Martin
Redefining the Benchmarks of
Human Resource Management
50
Rob Leslie
A Pioneer of Anti-money
Laundering and KYC domain
58
Stephanie LaTorre
A Techie creating Beautiful,
Functional, and Affordable
Websites for Businesses
10
Ruslan Desyatnikov
When Passion and Courage
Personify Altogether
C O V E R S T O R Y
18
24
3

7. 28
Women Empower
Dynamics of Women
Participation in the Ever-
changing Modern Workforce
36
Chalk Talk
Entrepreneurship Going
Beyond the Comfort of Safety
to Make Larger Impact
54
Editor's Desk
The Journey to
Self-Discovery
40
50
58
20
Leader’s Take
Which should my Businesses
Choose? CMMS Vs EAM?
IN
THIS ISSUE
A R T I C L E S
44
Tech Outlook
Coricraft: Transforms Customer
Delight and Delivery with
Trackmatic Solution
44

9. CONTENT
Senior Editor Alan Swann
Managing Editor Bhushan Ghate
Executive Editors Sourabh More
Alex Spellman
DESIGN
Visualizer Dave Bates
Art & Design Director Sanket Zirpe
Associate Designer Iresh Mathapati
SALES
Senior Sales Manager Kshitij S.
Customer Success Manager Jack Ryan
Sales Executives John, Kane, Irfan
TECHNICAL
Technical Head Aditya K.
Technical Consultant Victor Collins
September, 2019
k.roy@ciolook.com
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10. Ruslan
Desyatnikov
“We are experts each of the QA service
verticals, so our services aren't just
words on a screen.”
Ruslan Desyatnikov
Founder and CEO
QA Mentor
When Passion and Courage Personify Altogether

11. COVER STORY

12. “Success is a choice. It is up to you
to become successful or watch how
other people become successful.
Follow your dreams and do not be
afraid to make decisions.”

13. he journey to success often
Tstarts with struggles
accompanied by some
unpredictable situations. In order
to climb the ladder, one has to
cope with various failures and face
the inevitable circumstances. The
entrepreneurial journey of Ruslan
Desyatnikov, the Founder and
CEO of QA Mentor, exemplifies
such a struggling dilemma.
Emphasizing the courage to
pursue passion, CIO Look brings to
you the triumphant journey of an
avid entrepreneur, Ruslan.
Ruslan started his career 22 years
ago as a junior tester. He was
struggling to find his first job after
graduation, while many of his
college peers found their jobs very
quickly. One job he was offered
was in a junior tester position. At
that time, he didn't have any
knowledge about testing or the
role of a junior tester because for
the most part everybody was
going into development
programming. He took this job
because he had no other choices.
And since that time, he has never
regretted his choice because he it
led to something he loved.
Throughout these 22 years, Ruslan
spent much of his time stepping
into leadership roles in the quality
assurance and testing field, up to
and including the start of his
entrepreneurial journey back in
2010. Prior to starting his own
company, he was working in
different capacities and at
different organizations and
companies, such as HSBC and
Citibank, where he held a senior
management role managing
several teams of over 100 people.
After that, he felt he could help
other companies around the world
to improve quality by starting his
own company. And that is how QA
Mentor, a leading QA provider,
was conceived.
QA Mentor supports various
industries and technologies. In
order to make its offerings
appealing, the company has a
number of unique services. It
offers 32 different quality
assurance testing services in the
quality assurance domain and
covers nearly all angles of the
service offerings. In order to
attract its potential customers and
clients, it offers a number of on-
demand services which allow its
customers to utilize the company
only when they need it. For
instance, companies don't need to
have a long-term contract or many
resources billable throughout the
whole year. QA Mentor has
options where if there is no
requirement, it can stop, pause the
engagement, and then re-engage
when the work is there. This
allows its customers and clients to
save a lot of resources.
In addition, the company is unique
in its own space in terms of
providing strategic directions and
consultations. So basically, it is not
a body shop where many
organizations just provide
resources to do the tasks. QA
Mentor provides coaching,
training, guidance, and that's how
the name 'QA Mentor' came
about. QA is all about mentorship,

14. guidance, and strategic support. It
is not only about testing but also
providing recommendations on
how to establish better, more
streamlined processes, and how
to take an immature QA
organization to the next level.
Along with the service offerings,
QA mentor also provides expertise
and expert services which can help
the company to build a QA
department from scratch. It can
build a very big testing center of
excellence, which it has done for
many Fortune 500 companies. It
can also provide cost effective
testing solutions in order for its
customers to save money. The
company provides on-demand
solutions and various other
automation testing solutions to
save on the cost of the manual
testers. In other words, instead of
executing thousands of test cases
manually, the company can
automate them and can provide
those solutions to its customers.
Fundraising is always a challenging
component when starting a
business. Ruslan started his
business without any investment
money. He didn't want to borrow
any money from investors or from
the bank. He utilized his own
money, and thus it was challenging
in the beginning. Ruslan believes
that the initial stage is extremely
important and difficult, when
you're starting from scratch and
don't have any clients yet. It
becomes very important to invest
into the right marketing and
advertising strategy to attract
customers and clients. So, initial
challenges with funds were always
there to begin with for him. At one
point, it became difficult for him
even to pay salaries. Occasionally
he had to delay some salaries by
two, maybe three months, but
always with the promise that he'd
pay everyone everything they
were owed. Fortunately, his team
was on his side, trusted his
strategies, and that's why they
didn't leave him high and dry.
Though this dilemma, Ruslan
learned a valuable lesson - it's very
important to have a backup plan.
Something will likely go wrong,
and you need to plan the budget
accordingly so that if certain
projects are not there, you can still
survive for the six months at least.
One needs to be very aggressive in
terms of identifying customers
and clients and establish very
strong marketing strategies and
techniques. According to him,
without a proper go-to market
strategy and sales strategy, one
won't be successful as one will not
find any clients or customers.
Hence, strategic investment into
the marketing and advertising and
sales are extremely important for
the business.
Secondly, it also became
complicated for Ruslan initially
when everything did start taking
off. QA Mentor started growing
exponentially. It also acquired
other companies along the
journey. After three to four years,
everything started going off
rapidly. Ruslan believes, this is
where businesses risk failure as
they grow very fast hire people

16. quickly, and then need to sustain
growth. QA mentor implemented
a number of internal training and
on-boarding training sessions with
its new employees, where it gave
them two weeks orientation in
overall company strategy and
methodology along with its own
QA testing techniques. This
helped to ensure that everybody
would operate the same way,
following all protocols and best
practices. The company built many
internal training programs which
helped it to onboard new hires
quickly. And not only onboard but
integrate them into the teams so
they can operate much quicker
and more efficiently. In the opinion
of Ruslan, sustaining the growth is
a good problem to deal with, but
one can easily fail and leave a lot of
unhappy customers in the wake of
the mess created by rapidly
expanding team growth that lacks
any strategy. So, it's extremely
important to have the right on-
boarding strategy, training
strategy, and internal training, and
that's what QA Mentor does. It has
invested a lot of money to build E-
learning training across the board.
QA Mentor has been growing year
after year at the rate of 30%, and
its global strategy is to establish its
presence in every country in the
world. For that reason, it is striving
to open new locations across the
globe. It is already operating in
seven different countries and
continuing to establish its footprint
in many more countries where it can
help companies within that region to
adapt to QA Mentor's strategies,
best practices and methodologies.
Its goal is to become a global leader
in testing. Many organizations are
providing a combination of
development and testing, but QA
Mentor is strictly concentrating
around testing. It is also trying to hit
1,000 employees within five years.
Right now, it has 274 global
resources, which leaves a lot of
room to grow. Through its
acquisition strategies, it has
acquired three companies since it
started back in 2010.
In addition, QA Mentor also wants
to continue offering more services
in the latest technology space such
as Internet of Things, blockchain,
machine learning, and artificial
intelligence. It is continually
performing its R &D in those areas
so that it can be equipped to support
many organizations with the latest
technologies, test those
technologies, and automate testing
around those technologies as well.
When asked about the essential
attributes every entrepreneur must
possess, Ruslan emphasized the
skills of decision making. According
to him, as a business leader one has
to be brave and bold in their
decisions. While addressing young

17. entrepreneurs he says, “You don't
have to be afraid of making mistakes
with your decisions because business
leaders are the ones who should make
the decisions, and I've seen many
business leaders who are afraid to
make a mistake or to make a decision.
So in my life, in my career, I made tons
of mistakes. But I learned from those
mistakes, and at the same time I never
was afraid to make a decision.
Whether the decision was bad or good
is one thing, but I was constantly
evaluating and moving forward with
decisions based on that.”
He also advises business leaders to
take responsibility for their
decisions. He also emphasizes being
disciplined, stating that it's very
important to be disciplined and to
follow the strategy and
methodology and approach and not
to deviate from the established
methodologies. Also, in his opinion,
being fair is an essential attribute
too. He says, “Whenever you see
certain things not really working well
you have to explain the things that are
not working, and at the same time
when you see certain things getting
done correctly you have to praise your
guys. It's very, very important to be fair
and to give constructive criticism, and
at the same time continuously grow
your staff, because if they're not
growing, you're not going to grow and
hence, the company is not going to
grow. So that's extremely, extremely
important to do that. It's also very
important to remember that you have
to appreciate and praise people for
working hard and recognize them
because they need that.”
In his advice to the emerging
entrepreneurs, he further adds,
“Don't be afraid to start your own
business. Obviously, you have to think
this through, you have to plan it
accordingly. It helps to have some
investments ready to do that, but don't
wait too long. I actually regret that I
started a so late. I thought that I need
to gain more knowledge, more
experience, and so it wasn't until
after10 years that I finally decided to
open my own company. But I think
people should not wait too long. You'll
learn as you go - we never stop
learning, and it's not possible to know
everything. You will be learning until
your retirement. So, you have to jump
in without worry and without fear. And
always believe in and follow your
dreams because success depends on
only you. If you want to be successful
you have to follow your dreams and
you have to do whatever it takes for
you to succeed. Success is a choice. It's
up to you to become successful or not.
You can control that success yourself.
Obviously, there are a lot of risks and
failures in front of you, but you can
overcome. You have got to be strong
and you have got to keep going. Don't
be discouraged if something is not
working. And this is going to happen
many times. But you still need to fight
and continue and fall and stand up and
move forward.”

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20. Elena Kyria
Finding Exceptional Talent
| September 2019 |
18

21. lena is an award winning specialist on talent
Eattraction.
She helps companies hire exceptional talent from all
over the world. She coaches and supports top talent in
building up their professional brand, to maximize
career possibilities. She is also specialised in sourcing,
supporting and recruiting experienced professionals in
Quality and Regulatory Affairs for startups, SME’s and
global corporations in the Medtech industry.
Find out about her story below.
After 5 years of working for a corporate recruitment
company and achieving the title of top performer, Elena
decided to go it alone and she started her own business
at the age of 25. Elemed is specialized in recruiting
exceptional talent in the medtech industry, and works
across Europe with all types of companies, Startups,
Consultancies, Notified Bodies and Industry.
One of the great things about being a specialist
recruiter is that the you are able to see the whole
picture across the industry. When recruiting for
corporates, some of the most common complaints from
candidates is the complexity of the organisational
structure, the time it takes to get decisions through,
and not being able to have a real impact. Whilst
companies can’t simply go in and flatten the
organisational structure, her advice to leaders is to
engage in discussions with their employees, to give
them a chance to feel that their voice is being heard.
She is proud to play an instrumental role to bring
companies some of the best talent in the market. The
company recruits the people that solve regulatory and
compliance problems so that patients from all over the
world can have access to life saving and life enhancing
medical devices. It is in a really pivotal moment in the
medical device industry with the transition to the new
regulation. “This puts a big strain on resources for a lot of
companies, and our role in helping companies recruit
technically competent, effective candidates in an extremely
passive market is something we are great at.”
One of the main things, she has learnt about leadership is
that great leaders are developed and not born.
Leadership is less about you and more about the people
you are leading, their wants, their needs and their
feelings. “It’s a really enjoyable yet challenging journey, but
for me, one of the most rewarding things is seeing your team
become more and more independent and excel.” She was
once told, “a leadership success is getting your people to the
point they no longer need you”.
As a business, it’s always important to be diversifying the
offerings to make sure that the company is fitting well
with what the clients need, but it’s also important to give
back. Whilst recruitment is its core business, there is a
huge demand for information on the new medical device
regulation, especially in the medical device market where
Elemed recruit. She recently had the idea to create a
community among her Linkedin Network. The EU
MDR/IVDR update forum was created as a place to share
ideas, questions, updates and support. The idea has taken
off really well- this online community currently stands at
3,500 people!
Elena thinks and believes flexibility is important, as is a
certain fearlessness to not be afraid to make mistakes.
Leadership today is very much about empathy. Finally,
the concept of the servant leader is something she
aspires to be. This is the idea that you work for your
team, they don’t work for you. Your job as leader is all
about facilitating their success.
Elena likes to read, alot! We are living in such a
fascinating time. The internet has completely changed
how we live our lives and how we interact as humans. She
is really interested in personal growth and development,
topics like the millennial generation in the workplace,
how machine learning will impact us, and how the future
of healthcare will look. As a company, it is a very exciting
moment for Elena and her team, with the launch of their
new website happening very soon. They have had a
serious facelift. Stay tuned!
To have problems is to be alive. The only people
who don’t have problems live in a graveyard.
19
| September 2019 |

22. CMMS
hen it comes to the right software for tracking your asset’s
Wmaintenance history, you have a few options ahead of you. There
are several powerful tools across the board, however, the two
most common you’ll encounter are a CMMS and an EAM. These programs
are an essential piece for a growing business to track their maintenance and
asset’s span, so choosing the correct one can mean all the difference for
your business.
At its core, a CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) is a
system used to track work orders, maintenance history, and preventive
maintenance schedules for assets related to your businesses.
Maintenance teams use a CMMS to quickly discover everything about an
asset, from where it is located to knowing who has work on it and when. This
insight helps centralize all maintenance information in one system helping
teams improve their productivity. A CMMS also helps streamline
maintenance processes by providing visibility to all parties involved.
Maintenance managers can view and track work order statuses assigned to
technicians, as well as quickly notifying technicians of new tasks.
In contrast to the primary maintenance tracking a CMMS provides, an
EAM’s (Enterprise Asset Management) primary function is to focus on up-
time, planning, and asset workflow for all devices across a large-scale
company. It is used to track every part of an asset’s life cycle, from
procurement to disposal, combining both the features of a CMMS with
powerful utilities covering accounting, asset’s cost and profits, and
operations. With an EAM, your business can see exactly how much an asset
both produces and costs, allowing you to make accurate projections while
simultaneously seeing where certain assets need more focus to ensure
profitability. Downtime, a dreaded occurrence on all high-value assets, can
even be accurately tracked within the tools it provides.
WHICH SHOULD MY BUSINESSES CHOOSE?
| September 2019 |
20

23. EAM
?Ryan Chan CEO Founderis and at
.UpKeep Maintenance Management
He is a Chemical Engineer from UC
Berkeley, was named one of Forbes
30 Under 30 for Manufacturing in
2018 and is part of the Official
Forbes Technology Council. Ryan
started UpKeep out of passion and
frustration by the lack of mobility in
today’s maintenance management
software. UpKeep has now been
deployed to over 10,000 businesses
and is a leader in mobile-first
maintenancemanagementsoftware.
About the Author
Leader’s Take
21
| September 2019 |

24. EAM software also adds the benefit of streamlined
financial reports, allowing you to see a breakdown of all
costs incurred by your appliances. These reports can be
a blessing during an audit and allow your financial team
an easy look at your current assets without having to
train them in the full use of your EAM software. If
you’re only using a CMMS software, integrations with
accounting software may be limited. Most EAMs will
automatically integrate with accounting software like
QuickBooks, allowing the reports to be automatically
generated and transferred at the push of a button.
CMMS and EAM sound quite similar, don’t they? While
superficially they may appear to show the same
function, the improvements of an EAM’s additional
features on top of CMMS present an attractive option
for businesses that have grown beyond one or two
locations. How do you determine if you need a CMMS
or an EAM software? Here are a few key questions to
ask when determining which software is right for your
business.
How large is your maintenance team?
If you are currently at a few locations with less than ten
technicians on duty, a CMMS software is usually more
than sufficient to track each of your asset’s
maintenance history. The proximity allows your
maintenance team to easily see and track when assets
are purchased or on the verge of breaking down,
allowing a more hands-on approach to tracking their
life cycle. You will also likely have no issue handling the
financial aspect and budget tracking with your repairs
until you begin to expand.
If you have a multitude of locations and a sizable team,
the power of an EAM software allows your teams to see
an eagle-eye view of all of your appliances without
having to visit each location or contact that location’s
supervisor for updates. Over all, if your maintenance
teams are not split into more than a handful of locations
while only having a maintenance team size of less than
ten, the use of a CMMS would be more cost effective
than transitioning to an EAM.
Do you own and manage 500+ assets?
Eventually there comes a time when it becomes too
time consuming for you to personally manage each
asset over multiple programs. This tipping point can
occur at various times in a business’s lifespan. Once you
reach near the 500+ asset mark, you’re going to have
more eyes on your assets than just your maintenance
teams. Your financial team may be looking at an asset to
determine if it’s still profitable, while your compliance
team will be concerned with the asset’s safety through
its lifespan.
With an EAM, every team can take control of their
particular specialty, from your finance and production
teams to your maintenance and compliance team. An
EAM allows them each to utilize their own workflow,
optimizing the time spent scrutinizing your assets to
look for cost savings and improvements. Your financial
team, production team, and especially your compliance
team all benefit from the EAM’s ability to segment
specialized tools for their tasks, making the cost of the
system and training much more efficient than each
team doing it by hand.
So which should you choose for your business?
Despite the similarities of the products, the true
difference between an EAM and a CMMS comes down
to the scale of your business. While large businesses
may find themselves in the position of an EAM suite
being necessary, most small business owners can
breathe easy knowing a CMMS will likely suit their
needs just fine. Small businesses often can justify using
multiple programs in conjunction with a CMMS to both
save on budget, while the complexities of owning
thousands of assets can make the EAM a must for
management to have the all-in-one solution at their
fingertips.
Moving from CMMS to EAM is not one to be
undertaken lightly, but not as difficult as many business
owners imagine. Owners will start to plan for the
change when their assets begin to pass the thousand
mark over multiple locations. Consult with your core
team of your asset manager, maintenance manager,
maintenance technician, and CMMS vendor to
determine when the upgrade is optimal for your
business and your future profits.
| September 2019 |
22

26. MARC
RIPPENStriving to Save and Improve the Lives of Diabetics
Marc Rippen, President & Founder, Alertgy
| September 2019 |
24

27. L
eadership role involves influencing group
activities and coping with change. Healthcare
leadership is often associated with
improvements in patient care or organizational
outcomes applied in the healthcare industry. A
healthcare leader must adopt a suitable approach for
handling conflict at all stages to create a positive
outcome for all. It emphasizes in establishing the
leadership role that facilitates effective and efficient
healthcare provision. Alertgy provides the world’s
first real-time wearable non- invasive continuous
glucose monitor and alert system. Marc Rippen is
Alertgy’s President and Founder. He is a visionary
leader, highly skilled engineer, scientists, technical
sales and marketing professional with a proven track
record in product development, program
management and sales related to the application of
high technology to solve what people thought were
impossible problems.
With over 30 years of experience, Marc has worked
for multiple fortune 500 companies, Department of
Defense (DOD), NASA, SOCOM, and DARPA
commercializing dozens of ground-breaking and
revolutionary technologies. He holds various
degrees across multiple interrelated disciplines
including Microbiological Sciences and Immunology,
Biophysics, Analytical Chemistry, Masters of
Aeronautical Science, Management of Engineering
and Technology. These skills have allowed him to
support the transition of technology from the lab
into startup businesses, and then to publicly traded
corporations.
Transformational Leader
Marc began to learn leadership skills as a teenager,
first as an explorer scout, then as a volunteer in a
program called Amigo’s De Las America’s where he
was trained to administer vaccinations to small
children and then actually did that for thousands of
children when he applied his hiking skills in reaching
them in remote plantations in the Highlands of
Guatemala in the summer of 1974. From there he
joined ROTC in college and was trained to be an
officer in the United States Army. He was
commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1978. He
trained and served initially as an Armor Officer and
Give a person
a sh, and
he will eat
well for a day,
show a person
how to sh,
and he will
eat for the
rest of his life.
Alertgy
25
| September 2019 |

28. later in Special Forces, Combat Engineers and finally
as a Technical Project Officer. In his civilian
profession as a materials engineer at United
Technologies Corporation, he quickly advanced into
program management. Over several decades he
directed advanced applied research and
development programs for the NASA, the Airforce,
Army, DARPA, Navy, and SOCOM. In his last
position, he was the Director of Engineering for SRI’s
Marine and Space Technology Group.
Difficulties and its Effective Strategies
The biggest challenge is that in the United States,
everything is driven by short term goals. This makes
it difficult for public corporations to compete
globally as they can not use long term strategies
effectively. They are judged by analysts who are
focused on short term analytics, and that can
devalue a company’s worth overnight based upon
their opinion. Marc thinks that companies are more
able to compete if they are privately held by
investors that can think in terms of long term
strategic goals. He also thinks that many U.S.
companies do not have enough technologists
/engineers in high enough levels, this combined with
their aversion to risk hurts the ability of companies
to take advantage of applying emerging technologies
before they become obvious to the competition.
Ethical and Diversified Offerings
Alertgy uses social media, focus groups, pilot studies,
and other outreach techniques to diversify its
offering to create an appeal in-front of its target
audiences. Marc would like to sponsor applied
research programs to further applications for the
company’s technology at Universities. He sees
himself running a technology skunkworks and
mentoring young engineers & scientists to apply
their knowledge and research and development
skills to address all the technical challenges that exist
in the medical, energy, food and environment that
can benefit mankind as a whole while building strong
technology-based industries in the United States.
Solution-oriented Vision
Marc thinks every leader must be driven by a vision
to provide a solution that benefits their customers
better than any other existing solution. He
constantly invests his time in attending industrial
and technological trade shows/conferences, reading
technical literature, and learning new things every
day. He also is an adjunct professor of Aeronautical
Science at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University and
finds that in teaching one has to learn the most to be
properly prepared for class and in answering the
many great questions that students give you.
Improving Health through Innovation
Alertgy saves the lives of diabetic patients, by
dramatically improving their quality of life,
increasing their lifespan and by easing the burden to
their loved ones and caretakers mostly by providing
the world’s first real-time wearable non-invasive
continuous glucose monitor and alert system. The
company was founded by a small team of innovators
who have collaborated on challenging technical
programs over the years. Marc founded the company
as a result of saving his wife from entering a diabetic
coma in 2016. It was then he realized the existing
unmet need for this technology to measure blood
sugar levels with an external wearable sensor device.
He put together an “A-Team” of professionals whom
he has worked with over the last decades in taking
technical laboratory concepts to proof of principal
demonstrations and scaling to global
commercialization in several industries. Ironically
Marc saved his own life using his first prototype
which when he tested it indicated that he was a
hyperglycemic type 2 diabetic, with a blood sugar
reading of 650 mg/dl (>150 is bad). His a1c was 12.8
(>7 is bad). Over 9 million people in America are
unaware that they are diabetic and only find out
when they are hospitalized as the disease
progresses.progresses.
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26

30. Participation in the Ever-changing
Modern Workforce
Dynamics of
| September 2019 |
28

31. G
one are the days when women were
stereotyped to a certain set of skills and
professions, restricting them from exploring the
world of endless opportunities. Today, women have
announced their arrival in many fields of the business
world. Therefore, it seems more important than ever
before to recognize female contributions in every
profession.
Fighting through biased work culture in favour of male
dominance, women have conquered the unconquered
on the account of their distinct calibre and
predilections. In the times when the world female
participation rate is to the dispiriting levels of around
67% and pay-off rate of about 63%, achievements by
women go-getters are praiseworthy.
Listening capabilities is one of the distinguishing
aspects of feminine species as compared to their male
counterparts. Instilling and pursuing ones thoughts is
undoubtedly important for effective working. But being
a better listener is something that can make a
difference as studies show that the customer values
and trusts the firms if they perceive that they are being
listened to by the firms. With inherent caring and
affectionate traits, women outclass men when it comes
to understanding critical demands of the customers.
Emotional Intelligence (EI) - the ability to identify and
manage one’s own emotions as well as the emotions of
others - is an essential skill when it comes to dealing
with a diverse class of consumers. Women are naturally
gifted with higher EI making them better suited for
pressure situations and avoiding counter-productive
decisions while keeping emotions in check.
Emotional Intelligence encompasses two major
dimensions – awareness of one’s self and awareness of
others. Both the attributes are very much significant for
the survival and success of any organisation. Self-
awareness involves being familiar with trigger points
and behavioural traits when put to the test. This, in
turn, helps to modulate impulses avoiding conclusions
which are harmful for the welfare of business. In
addition to self-awareness, an awareness of others is
equally critical in business. Analysing and decoding
non-verbal communication – that amounts to 93% of
the message – eventually benefits in convincing and
converting a lead into a client.
Collaboration, and not the cutthroat competition, is the
modern era’s principle virtue to achieve success. Many
endeavours which seem to be beyond the bounds of
possibility can be attained by combining efforts from
different resources, channels and departments.
Further, collaborating products with consumer
experience are enormously important. It leads to
crafting the best solutions for customer’s pain points
and compelling value propositions that reflect their
overall business objectives.
Multiple studies have found that women prefer to work
in teams, while men prefer to work alone. An
unfaltering affinity towards collaboration primes
women to garner success in different fields of business
which gives them an edge over others.
Increased profitability can be a motivating factor for
many firms to hire more pool of female talents as many
studies support the fact. Statistical research shows that
Fortune 500 companies with the highest
representation of women on boards financially
outperform companies with the lowest representation
of women on boards. Moreover, gender-diverse teams
have higher sales and profits compared to male-
dominated teams, and a recent Gallup study found that
gender-diverse business units have higher average
revenue than less diverse business units.
Trust over female leaders is an attribute which needs
to be reciprocated while making the choice. More
American workers perceive female executives as
honest and ethical than male executives. Pew’s
“Women and Leadership” surveyed Americans in 2015
and found that 34% say women are better at this, while
only 3% say men are better at it (64% say there’s no
difference).
While it’s unclear whether this means women are
actually more honest, it’s a subtle reminder of how
tangled some business decisions can be. Leaders are
often tasked with choosing between options that aren’t
black and white, ethically speaking, and the capacity to
lead honestly is important to the entire company’s
success and job satisfaction.
Not to mention, increased job satisfaction and
organizational dedication to cite positive and
meaningful business culture are the added advantages
feminine employees carry to the organisation.
However, the journey is not all merry go round every
time. Hindrances – seen, unseen – are there to check
the unrelenting zeal of women aspirants to thrive in the
industry. These obstructions need to be pointed out
and rectified to create an environment that fuels
women empowerment.
Women Empower
29
| September 2019 |

32. Lack of confidence, according to many experts, is one
prime reason women tend to question themselves and
doubt their worthiness. In order to advance, they must
coach their inner critics.
Out-speak and define what women want
professionally if they want to get succeeded. Too often
they don’t know or rely upon others to define it for
them.
“Building relationships with those in positions of leadership
is critical,” Susan Brady, executive vice president of
Linkage Inc. says. “Put down the to-do list long enough to
connect with decision makers across the organization, and
help them understand who you are and what you bring to
the table.”
Women are generally uneasy about asking for what
they want. They must stop thinking about what they
need as a self-serving request. They must develop the
courage and fortitude to stand up and ask for what they
want.
While proving value, women tend to overcompensate
in order to demonstrate that they are adding value.
Instead of doing it all alone, change the paradigm and
track to encourage others to take on more
responsibility, thus enabling them to scale and multiply
their own impact.
Not to forget, biased work culture and regional
barriers are the crucial obstacles in the road of women
work participation. But, today women are breaking
these shackles and coming out boldly to be a part of
economic processes shouldering their male
counterparts.
There has been obvious progress in achieving gender
equality around the world over the past two decades:
more girls are attending school, more women are
working and are being elected to public offices, more
women hold management positions, and the situation
involving women’s legal as well as social rights have also
improved.
However, a great deal still remains to be done to
achieve equal outcomes for women and men.
Recognizing women’s abilities, the values they bring to
the organisation, the transformation they achieve as far
as work environment is concerned, and considering
monetary benefits associated with the female work
participation, corporate sector need to welcome their
emergence with open arms. No future is far where
male-dominated workplaces will be a tale of extinct,
we believe.
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34. Mirna Sleiman
A Leader Destined to Disrupt the Digital Transformation
guilty, and to dream big. Women are braver than they
believe, stronger than they seem and smarter than they
think. Success is never achieved alone and wisdom is
sweeter when shared. The world needs more women
who believe in their own power and are bold enough to
speak about their ambitions.
We at Fintech Galaxy connect the fintech ecosystem
and cater to the needs of financial institutions, startups
and investors. And for each type of customer we offer a
solution to their most pressing needs. Banks want to
innovate and we help them connect with bright minds
in a very efficient and cost effective way. Startups want
to scale and need funding; we help them with business
development and fund raising. Investors are hungry for
a healthy deal flow, and we provide that.
Learning never ends, and Fintech is a fast evolving
industry. Banks are being disrupted by all types of
technologies. It's important to read, take certificates
and stay connected with brains at conferences and
social media.
I compete with myself. I keep an eye on market
competition but I only benchmark with my vision. It's
simple—I imagine my company 10 years from now and I
charge forward.
Talking about leadership, I firmly believe that a leader
must possess the qualities of curiosity, humility and
empathy. The rest you learn in a business school. I'm
still taking baby steps. I have a big dream and I will never
stop until I see the region we live in, enjoys the
empowerment of youth, women and financial inclusion.
About the Leader
Mirna Sleiman is an experienced executive with 15+
years of proficiency in government relations, business
strategy, digital communications and journalism, mostly
within the MENA region. Driven by passion for
With the 'Making a difference' edition, CIO Look
attempts on spreading opinions of some
exceptionally talented women leaders who
have keenly contributed their share in evolving
business aspects.
Meet one such result-driven leader, Mirna Sleiman, the
Founder and CEO of Fintech Galaxy, who single-
handedly brought a disruption in the traditional order
of marketing for businesses. Her commendable
business sense and distinctive social skills drove her
into obtaining some remarkable achievements in the
world of business. Her authentic way of assisting
various organizations in attaining digital
transformation, is more often an inspiration for
aspirants, entering into the digitization business.
Following is the story of Mirna, a proficient forerunner with
a vision to transform business digitally, in her own words:
I have spent most of my career rubbing shoulders with
leaders. As a journalist, I've interviewed central bank
governors, ministers and heads of states. I've lived
through the boom and bust of financial markets and
learned a great deal from CEOs, high net-worth
individuals and successful entrepreneurs.
I mentor entrepreneurs and support them wherever I
can. I'm a mother of three, entrepreneur and just
finished my EMBA. There's no tradeoff and there's no
balance. One feeds the other success at work means
happiness at home. The best I do is to present myself as
a role model to my kids and to other women out there. I
don't really fight for equality, but I definitely encourage
diversity in all its forms and shapes.
Women have themselves as the biggest enemy; their
own limitations, their own fears. Women have everything
it takes to lead and create impact because they're
driven by compassion and emotional intelligence. My
advice to women is to have self-belief, to stop feeling
| September 2019 |
32

35. Mirna Sleiman
Founder & CEO
Fintech Galaxy
Fintech Galaxy
33
| September 2019 |

36. empowers fintech entrepreneurs and connects them to
financial institutions, consultants, tech companies,
mentors and investors. It works as an open innovation
marketplace for organizations based in the MENA
region to post challenges for its global network of
startups to take a crack at solving them in order to gain
business contracts or cash rewards. The company
advises startups on fund raising, operational growth
and business development. The platform also brings to
the MENA market, a network of global fintech experts
in disciplines like blockchain, AI, payments, robotics and
data science.
With a wealth of content and a virtual gallery of the
best success case studies in the financial technology
space, Fintech Galaxy supports the world's most
promising entrepreneurs throughout their journey
from inspiration to global growth.
innovation and creating a positive impact, Mirna has a
track record in leading digital transformation projects,
marketing communications strategies and global
partnerships with public and private entities, focusing
on knowledge economy development, regulatory
infrastructure and financial markets.
Moreover, she has managed public sector business for
Thomson Reuters across MENA and partnered with
international organizations to promote innovation and
social change. Currently, she resides on the advisory
board of the Union of Arab Banks and MENA Research
Partners.
She has spent more than 10 years as a financial
journalist with Reuters, Dow Jones, The Wall Street
Journal and Zawya. She has been adorned with three
EMEA Dow Jones awards and a Global William Clabby
Award in investigative reporting, Thomson Reuters
Over And Above award for strategic relations and the
IPRA trophy for the impact on the region's corporate
world. Also she has been certified from MIT University
in fintech and e-commerce, Columbia University in
Digital Marketing and Communications, and an
Executive MBA from City University of London.
About the Company
Fintech Galaxy is a digital crowdsourcing platform that
| September 2019 |
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38. | September 2019 |
36

39. Entrepreneurship
Going Beyond the Comfort of
Safety to Make Larger Impact
E
ntrepreneurship is the process
of starting a new business that
adds some value to the world by
solving some specific problems.
Entrepreneurship is the capacity and
willingness to develop, organize and
manage a business venture along with
any of its risks in order to make a
profit. Entrepreneurship combined
with land, labor, natural resources and
capital can make a profit. Those who
create these businesses are called
entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurial spirit
is characterized by innovation and risk
taking and is an essential part of a
nation’s ability to succeed in
constantly changing and increasingly
competitive global market place.
Entrepreneurship in its truest form is
all about identifying a gap in the
market and creating a product which
can fill that hole. Entrepreneurship is
not solely about making money- it is
also about changing and enriching the
lives for better. It is about improving
people’s lives through creation of
products or launching services that
makes the lives of people easy. If one’s
business does not add value to the
lives of people then it is unlikely to
survive. The business that makes
nothing but money can easily be
considered as a poor business.
Entrepreneurship is the act of being
an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs act as
managers and oversee the launch and
growth of an enterprise. It is a process
by which either an individual or a team
identifies a business opportunity and
acquires and deploys the necessary
tools and resources required for its
utilization.
Entrepreneurship is all about being
ready to go beyond the comfort zone.
It is about defining success on one’s
own terms and achieving it by one’s
own process and methodology. It is
also about thinking outside the box or
thinking like there is no box. True
entrepreneurial spirit is about seeing
challenges as opportunities.
Entrepreneurs should be able to shake
off depression, laziness and should
jump into the flowing stream of hard
work in order to achieve their dream.
True Entrepreneurs understand that
they can’t be great at everything they
do, but they know that they can be
great at something. They focus on that
particular something in which they are
good at with laser like focus and they
are passionate to deliver the best
solutions in their chosen work.
Entrepreneurs create something new,
something different that solves some
problems or adds value to the world.
An entrepreneur is a person who is
willing and able to convert a new idea
or invention into a successful
innovation. Entrepreneurial journey is
not always so easy. As Elon Musk
Quotes “Being an entrepreneur is like
eating glass and staring into the abyss of
death.” Many people experience
entrepreneurial journey as a
rollercoaster ride filed with challenges
and opportunities; ups and downs.
Entrepreneurship is about
37
| September 2019 |
Chalk Talk

40. perseverance through all such ups and
downs. The journey may be filled with
crest and troughs but the journey is
worth taking.
Entrepreneurs understand that
seduction of safety is much more
dangerous than the perception of the
risk. Therefore they take calculated
risks based on market trends and
market estimation. Where common
people see the problems
entrepreneurs see the opportunities.
Entrepreneurs are driven to create
solutions to those problems.
Entrepreneurs are not the part of
problems but entrepreneurs are
people who want to be part of the
solution to those problems.
Entrepreneurs are innately
programme to create solutions to the
existing problems.
Entrepreneurs roll up their sleeves
every day and work hard to create
solutions to the existing problems in
the world in order to make profit as
well as to enrich the lives of people.
They are in the game to make a
difference and impact in the lives of
people through offering solutions to
some of the biggest problems. Money
is secondary to them but making
valuable contribution and adding
value to the world is what they focus
on. They understand that money is
just a byproduct of serving as many
people as possible with full efficiency.
Entrepreneurs plan their work and
work their plan. Successful
entrepreneurship requires
entrepreneurs who take conscious,
systematic, logical and thoughtful
decisions. It is about thinking
deliberately and acting on the
conclusion of logical thought process.
Great entrepreneurs have the ability
to think decisively even in indecisive
environment also. Their conscience
and intuition helps them to come up
with some solutions that add glory to
their business. Successful
entrepreneurs are also very cautious
of making use of the latest technology
for creating more profitable solutions.
They know how to leverage
everything to create glorious business
that adds value to the larger portion
of the world.
Entrepreneurs are here to make a
valuable contribution to the world
through their words and worthy
actions; they just don’t want to occupy
the space in the universe.
Entrepreneurs believe in making
world a better place by creating
something that customizes the lives of
people for better. Great
entrepreneurs walk their talk and talk
their walk. Their lips and lives both
make difference in the lives of people.
They know that world rewards those
who press on. Entrepreneurship is
about paying the price of dedication,
commitment, sacrifices, hard work
and putting heart and soul into the
business to create something
different that makes lives of people
easier. The words and actions of great
entrepreneurs show that they know
where they are going and the world
has the habit of making room for such
people.
Entrepreneurship is about knowing
the way, going the way and showing
the way. Entrepreneurs lead by
example. They use all the resources
they have to make larger contribution
to the world. They think of changing
the world through their skills, abilities,
talents and making optimum
utilization of all the resources they
have. Entrepreneurs build a strong
network of people in their
organization. The great entrepreneurs
understand that one’s network
determines one’s net worth.
Therefore they choose smart and
pragmatic people around them that
are having the ability to come up with
solutions to some of the toughest
problems. They are very cautious of
people they associate with.
Entrepreneurship is about building
bridges of success instead of creating
barriers to opportunity. It is about
having talented people on-board to
come up with great idea and to
implement that idea to make a
tangible difference in the lives
of people.
| September 2019 |
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42. NicoleMartin
“We strive to bring joy
and purpose to people
though their work.”
| September 2019 |
40

43. Redefining the Benchmarks of
Human Resource
Management
he term human resource management was first
Tcoined in the 1960s when the value of labor
relations began to garner attention. Notions such
as motivation, organizational behavior, and selection
assessments began to take shape. In today’s scenario,
organizations are often in a need of a Human Resources
Management System in order to systematically
organize the workforce. In this competitive world there
are a few organizations which provide the best Human
Resources Management System in the marketplace,
and HRBoost LLC is one of them.
Emphasizing on the courage to pursue passion, the
ability to bring out a change and redefining
entrepreneurship, CIO Look brings to you the journey
of an avid leader, Nicole Martin, the Founder and CEO
of HRBoost LLC.
Following is Nicole’s story, possessing the potential of
inspiring and motivating everyone.
I am Nicole Martin. My vision, and the reason that I left
the corporate world to launch HRBoost, was to help
businesses to create winning workplaces through their
people. We desire to bring joy and purpose to people
through their work. HRBoost provides solutions with
passion to individuals, groups and businesses alike. We
do not operate under the philosophy that one size fits
all. Every leader must align their personal values to the
organizational values and define success clearly so that
every person can connect their role to a transcendent
organizational purpose. Our mission is to provide value
added Human Resource Services that allows each
business to do what it does best. When HR is aligned,
HR is no longer just a partner; it is a fundamental part
of the business helping to drive the human side of
profitability.
We have specialized experience in providing values to
small and middle sized companies, who, unlike their
large-company counterparts, can often lack the time
and resources to build infrastructure and processes
that are beyond core business objectives. But, every
business needs to have a competitive edge in today’s
economy. Both small and large companies need to
attract, develop and retain the best talent for their
organizations while complying with the ever changing
maze of state and the federal regulations. All
companies need to be concerned with issues related to
compensation, benefits, training, employee retention,
talent attraction and generational agility. HRBoost has
built its reputation on partnering with business leaders
to achieve corporate goals while maintaining integrity
and delivering outstanding results.
We serve businesses spanning over multiple sectors;
these include Professional Services, Non-Profit
Organizations, High Tech, Manufacturing, Staffing
firms, Hospitality, and Healthcare. Our clients are
typically from high growth business with 50-250
employees. Our model is to meet the clients wherever
they are, thus we provide full-service embedded HR
support, project to project support, culture design and
management training, employee programs and
assessments, virtual support, and phone support.
I am honored to lead a high performance team of HR
leaders who partners with our business clients to meet
them wherever they are on their journey, to being a
best place to work. We have experienced tremendous
growth and proudly nearly every client has been
sourced through word of mouth. Our appeal and
success is due to our personal dedication for each and
every client.
The greatest concern I see for today is the talent
emergency, which I address in detail in my book, “The
Talent Emergency.” Generational Agility is utmost
important to businesses who want to succeed and
grow. It is imperative that companies look within their
organizations to ensure that they have a culture which
HRBoost LLC
41
| September 2019 |

44. embraces diversity, not only we are
speaking to gender, culture, and
ethnicity, but also generational
diversity. Creating a team that brings
multiple views and experience to a
business provides a unique
perspective that will elevate the
business and ensure continuing
success, which in turn will lead them
to be a best place to work. Retaining
and attracting top talent is a sure way
to maximize the human side of
profitability and become THE place to
work.
A Multifaceted Leader
Nicole is an internationally renowned
speaker and an author. She is a
dynamic and empowering consultative
leader, and a futurist skilled in helping
organizations to meet their strategic
objectives.
In recognition of her complete
commitment to professional
excellence as well as her community,
Nicole has been honored by multiple
organizations and most recently as a
2016 Enterprising Women of the Year
Champion, by Enterprising Women
Magazine, a 2017 Excellence in Business
Award winner, and a Mirror Review
enlistee of, 20 Impeccable Women in
Business recognition in 2017.
As a highly regarded and sought after
expert, her knowledge and advice
have been featured in newspapers and
magazines throughout the country.
Recent publications, in which she has
been seen, include Forbes.com, the
Daily Herald Business Ledger, and Fast
Company.
She is the author of the books, The
Talent Emergency, The Human Side of
Profitability, No Fear Negotiation for
Women(August 2019), and The Power
of Joy and Purpose. She is also the
author of the chapter “Emotionally
Speaking” in the book titled Leading
from the Heart. In addition, Nicole is
the host of the internet show, HR in
the Fast Lane.
| September 2019 |
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46. Coricraft: Transforms Customer
Delight and Delivery with
Trackmatic Solution
oricraft, South Africa’s premium quality home
Cfurniture and furnishing design and
manufacturing company, contracted with
Trackmatic to help tackle the challenges it was facing
around fleet visibility and customer satisfaction. The
company wanted to reignite the magic of the last mile,
transforming how customers perceived their
performance and delivery efficiency. Today, Coricraft
has reduced its delivery window to less than two hours,
reduced customer complaints to a record low,
increased delivery drops per route, and has
transformed the customer experience, all while cutting
costs.
Last mile logistics is becoming increasingly difficult to
perfect and is evolving at a rapid rate due to the growth
of e-commerce. There is a growing need to get goods to
customers faster and more cost effectively. Customers
are willing to pay a premium for faster delivery
fulfillment and companies like Amazon are raising the
bar and raising customer delivery expectations.
According to McKinsey, last mile logistics have been
identified as the cornerstone to driving growth and
profitability, and companies like Coricraft are under
increasing pressure to create logistic strategies that
align business and customer expectations.
Last mile logistics are troublesome, especially in South
Africa. There are challenges around infrastructure,
addressing accuracy and security that impact on
delivery timing, fuel costs and efficiency. This is further
compounded by the complexity of delivering irregular
size furniture items that requires skilled unpacking and
assembly upon delivery. For Coricraft, these issues
were affecting its customer relationships and brand
reputation.
“In our industry, the journey doesn’t start and end in the
store,” says Craig Schneeberger, Chief Operating
Officer of Coricraft. “The real magic is in the last mile
when we deliver to your home. Purchasing furniture is a
very emotive thing and, with us, you pay money and
leave empty handed. We needed to refine our delivery
element which is one of the most difficult things for a
business to do successfully and profitably.”
Prior to its implementation of the Trackmatic Driver-
Led Visibility® solution, Coricraft was experienced
roughly 45 Hello Peter complaints a month. The
complaints were all centered around one specific issue
– customer service on delivery. The delivery window
sat at a lengthy three hours and customers were left
uncertain as to when their furniture would arrive, what
service they would receive on delivery, and timing
around the re-delivery of any incorrect or damaged
items. In addition, it was impossible to proactively
respond to failures in the field in real time.
“When we started working with Coricraft the first challenge
was to address the visibility of their fleet,” says David
Slotow, CEO, Trackmatic. “They needed a tool that would
allow them to communicate more clearly with their
customer service team by developing richer engagement
with their operations team and their drivers.”
For Coricraft, it was essential that delivery fulfillment
be transformed in such a way as to revolutionize
customer experiences. In addition, the company also
faced challenges around address capturing. Customers
often provided incorrect location details or left out
critical delivery information. Coricraft needed
technology that helped their drivers get to the right
place at the right time. The solution had to ensure that
when they delivered, the destination was location-
perfect to meet faster, tighter delivery windows.
“We could not tell customers accurately when their
deliveries would take place, especially as we didn’t have an
accurate measurement to easily determine the time it
would take between customer deliveries,” says William
Webb, Operations Executive, Coricraft. “We needed to
find a way to manage the drivers to ensure that they
adhered to the scheduled routes, stock on the
| September 2019 |
44

47. Craig Schneeberger
Chief Operating Officer
Coricraft
Tech Outlook
| September 2019 |
45

48. truck was secure and the customer experience was
pleasurable.”
Any failures on route resulted in delays further down
the line. If a customer wasn’t home or if the driver took
longer than planned to find an address, the waiting
times then had a knock-on effect until the last customer
had waited for far longer than anticipated and the
driver kicks into overtime. This often resulted in failed
deliveries or high overtime expenditure for teams
returning late.
“Those challenges of wasted kilometers and frustrated
clients were endemic, further impacted by unknown
addresses, failed deliveries and drivers wasting time and
fuel driving up and down a road looking for the right place,”
says Slotow. “For a company as aspirational and
professional as Coricraft, these delays and challenges were
impacting on the way customers perceived their service and
professionalism.”
Coricraft wanted a white-glove delivery process that
was as slick as its in-store experience. It needed the
same efficiencies at the point of fulfillment as it had at
point of sale. To start, Trackmatic integrated the
Coricraft point of sale system into their Address
Validation Tool (AVT). This allowed for a dedicated Data
Integrity Team at Trackmatic to process the addresses
and resolve them into GPS coordinates in real time. Any
conflicts of address would be filtered through Google
Maps and manually checked by a dedicated Data
Integrity Agent who could shift the pin to a more
accurate or relevant location, when required.
“A great example of where this level of manual control excels
is in gated estates,” explains Slotow. “The delivery entrance
could be different from the visitor’s entrance and the
vehicle has to then navigate back routes to get to the home.
That level of discretion doesn’t come from GPS, it comes
from human engagement, intellect and experience. We built
an entire Address Validation Tool (AVT) for Coricraft and
delivered a highly targeted and elegant solution without
any delay in the delivery timeline.”
The AVT solution is cloud-based and fully integrated,
taking the address from point of sale to the front door.
It provides an incredibly high level of accuracy and has
transformed delivery operations. It has also changed
the way the drivers engage with technology.
“Getting drivers to take their mobile device into the vehicle
and navigate with trust and confidence was a major
achievement,” says Slotow. “When the shift happened, it
was magic. They felt empowered as they could now resolve
issues independently without impacting on operations
when there were delays on the customer side. The
integrated voice solution allows them to contact customers
and let them know they are outside or their estimated time
of arrival. Trackmatic’s solution also stores all recordings in
the cloud to use in the driver debrief process and in case of
any issues. This process of continuous learning and
improvement has had a significant and positive impact on
results.”
Trackmatic believes in empowering the drivers,
providing them with the tools they need to deal with
frustrated customers in real time. Using this level of
engagement with the customer has meant that drivers
can relay issues around damaged items or poorly filled
orders and give the customer insight into when these
issues will be resolved. This availability of information
has seen a significant reduction in customer complaints
| September 2019 |
46

49. as most understand that there can be delays, but want
these delays communicated clearly and on time.
Creating a platform for real-time engagement and
communication has enhanced Coricraft’s relationship
with its customers as customers trust that they will be
kept informed of the progress of their delivery.
“Coricraft hasn’t done anything differently to achieve this
goal, they haven’t changed their manufacturing process or
their product range,” adds Slotow. “All it took was them
knowing that a customer was unhappy and having a
strategy in place to deal with them. This could be as simple
as sending out a manager to look at the product or ensuring
that any missing items were delivered straight away. This
level of customer engagement has made an instant, massive
difference.”
Coricraft can better plan and fine-tune deliveries,
optimize operations and redefine customer
engagement. Each challenge around visibility,
communication, control and timing has been addressed
using Trackmatic’s innovative and disruptive
technology solutions.
“The results speak for themselves,” adds Slotow.
“Customers have left positive feedback around the
professionalism of the delivery service and Coricraft has
grown their deliveries without having to expand on their
fleet or their teams. They have created capacity to scale
without increasing costs or infrastructure and, as benefits
go, that’s one that hits the bottom line.”
The company has seen delivery accuracies increase by
27%, the leave on time by 33%, (while shifting the start
time by an hour earlier) return on time by 36% and
overtime bills reduced by 15%. In addition, the time to
delivery has been reduced from three hours to 32
minutes and there has been an 80% increase in
customer service. Even more stats point to significant
increases in route efficiency (86%), turnaround
adherence time (94%) and a rise from 34 to 43 trucks a
day leaving the depots nationally each day.
“We are proud of the work that has been achieved at
Coricraft,” says Slotow. “Success does not happen by
chance, it takes the right client that is willing to collaborate,
experiment and trust us with their business.”
Trackmatic is currently working with Coricraft to
expand its solution which includes the Trackmatic
Insight analytic dashboards that will give Coricraft the
means to measure key performance metrics and
provide even more meaningful data for richer last mile
and customer delight deliverables.
Schneeberger concludes: “Trackmatic has given us
visibility into driver behavior so we can ensure we are as
efficient as we can be in terms of delivering our furniture.
Because we have this level of visibility, we can give our
customers visibility, and this allows us to proactively engage
with them and exceed their expectations.”
About Coricraft
For more than 20 years,
Coricraft has been the easy
choice for exceptional value on
top-quality furniture. From just
one store in Cape Town, we
have grown to a chain of almost
50 stores in South Africa,
Namibia and Botswana.
We have factories in Cape Town
and Johannesburg, where we
manufacture all our couches
ourselves. Beyond this large
manufacturing presence lies a
sophisticated retail
infrastructure, with Coricraft
stores across all South Africa’s
major towns and cities. For
customers, this means there is
always a Coricraft nearby.
| September 2019 |
47

52. Rob LeslieA Pioneer of Anti-money Laundering and KYC domain
D
igitalization has taken an active pace since its
inception. Integrating digital technology with
business aspects has turned out to be an art
rather than ‘a do’. This acknowledgement as an art,
led many innovations to flourish in the respective
industries. One with such comprehension is
Rob Leslie.
In an interview with CIO Look, Rob Leslie, Founder
and CEO of Sedicii, shares valuable insights from the
experiences he gained on his entrepreneurial
journey. Moreover, he broadly discusses the services
offered by the company.
Below are the highlights of the interview conducted
between Rob and CIO Look:
How do you diversify your organization’s offerings
to appeal to the target audience?
We take a collaborative approach to problem solving
with our clients, to deliver industry specific, cutting
edge eKYC and AML transaction monitoring
solutions to achieve their particular goals. Our target
audiences operate across banking & financial
services, governments and enterprise – where
regulatory requirements mandate high levels of
customer due diligence. We help reduce the burden
of responsibility and improve efficiencies for our
clients and enable them to preserve the privacy of
their customers.
At Sedicii, we provide a portfolio of solutions which
appeal to our target audiences. We help secure
identities and provide unique authentication and
identity verification services where personal
information is never exchanged without explicit data
owner consent. Sedicii’s key differentiator is our
focus on privacy using our patented application of
the zero knowledge proof protocol. With an
unwavering focus on adding value to clients, we are
constantly exploring innovative ventures.
Kindly take us through your journey on becoming a
leader.
Becoming a leader isn’t something you aim for. I
believe leaders evolve, partly by accident over a
period. It’s a blend of ideas, circumstances and a
determination and drive to bring ideas to life and
bring people together that makes a leader in my
view. It’s not about knowing everything, in fact it’s
quite the opposite -it’s about gathering and inspiring
a team of experts and collaborators to achieve
common goals. That’s the challenge, something I
truly relish! It might well be the engineer in me, but
where others may see problems to be avoided, I see
opportunities and challenge, and am rarely content
until they are fixed.
I whet my appetite with Dell Japan as part of a
management team that established and grew the
business to almost 300 employees and $300M
turnover in 4 years. Since then I have grown a
number of businesses to considerable scale. My
background is in the Anti-Money Laundering / Know
Your Customer (KYC) domain. I co-founded Kyckr, a
company which specializes in corporate identity and
AML compliance solutions. (Kyckr is now listed on
the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX:KYK)). This
opened up a whole new world of possibilities for
privacy protection and preservation of our identity.
| September 2019 |
50

53. Good leaders
drive their people
forward with
energy,
excitement,
vision, inspiration
and trust. When
you lead by
example, it is the
creation of the art
of the possible.
“
“
Rob Leslie
Founder & CEO
Sedicii
Sedicii
51
| September 2019 |

54. | September 2019 |
52

55. In 2015 the World Economic Forum named me as a
global Technology Pioneer - that was a significant
step on my leadership journey and was instrumental
in building a network of like-minded thought leaders
who inspire me to drive on and to explore innovative
opportunities and solutions to crucial challenges of
securing our current and future global economies.
What are the crucial traits which every business
leader must possess?
The role of a business leader, in my view is to inspire
the people around them to push themselves and in
turn the company, to excel in everything they do.
Good leaders drive their people forward with energy,
excitement, vision, inspiration, good communication
and trust. Leading by example, by walking the walk
and talking the talk builds that trust.
Warren Bennis was an American scholar and
organizational consultant. He is widely regarded as a
pioneer of the contemporary field of leadership
studies and is known to have created the famous
quote “Managers are people who do things right; leaders
are people who do the right thing.” As the leader, you
know that keeping your team together, working
towards a common goal, getting them to support and
help each other is your job. If you succeed, they will
succeed; morale will rise and more success will
follow.
As per your opinion, what roadblocks or challenges
are faced by a business in a corporate business?
And what is your advice to overcome them?
The challenges come from many angles, not always
from the direction you expect. Sometimes you need
eyes in the back of your head to keep ahead of the
game. Building the right team with the right skillset is
a challenge at the beginning, one we were fortunate
to do right from the start. With Sedicii, our unique
offering is our technology. Our tech team includes
experts in cutting edge machine learning,
cryptography and blockchain and they are constantly
challenging the status Quo with innovative ways to
tackle global issues related to privacy and identity.
Roadblocks often represent potential forks in the
road where decisions need to be made quickly and
being flexible in your approach is important.
What will be your future endeavors and/or where
do you see yourself in the near future?
We are working on some very interesting global
projects at present. Our AML transaction monitoring
service is one which is creating waves internationally
as it allows two banks to mutually assess risk by
gaining insight on all parties to a payment
transaction using a cryptographic protocol that
never exposes any private information about one
party to the other party’s bank. Sedicii’s AML
solution reduces false positives, identifies risks in
real-time, in full compliance with Banking Secrecy
and the strictest data privacy legislation.
As a leading expert in Zero Knowledge Proof
Protocol, what is your contribution in evolving the
digital sector?
Fragmented and unreliable digital identity
mechanisms are limiting growth in the global
economy and adding to the costs of doing business.
Experts are in agreement that securing identities is
critical, especially where the stakes are high.
Powered by Sedicii’s patented Zero-knowledge
proof (ZKP) technology, two parties can now prove
to each other that they both have the same piece of
information without the need to expose the
information that each has in their possession, or
under their control, to the other. Combining this
capability with efficient and easy-to-use consent
management, we can change the digital world as we
know it and simultaneously secure the privacy and
security of personal information (PII) throughout the
world. We see ourselves best placed to ‘Fix’ what we
call the ‘Identity Problem’ to enable the quantum
leap required to drive the next wave of business
innovation.
54
| September 2019 |

56. The Journey
Self-Discovery
to
Entrepreneurs set up their new ventures with a
new and unique vision, goal, and its future. These
entrepreneurs face many challenges over the
course of their journey. However, financial challenge is
the most painful ones they have to face. Making a list of
all the financial challenges can aid a business and a new
starting player in attaining sustainability and economic
stability.
The Small Business Association estimates that around
forty-four percent of startups and small business
survive at least for four years only. Others cite that poor
capital management, overspending, and the lack of reserve
funds are some of the common reasons behind a
business closure. All these three terms come under the
finances of a company.
One way to address the financial problems is to use the
4R formula i.e. Review, Revamp, Research, and Rewrite
the company’s business plans. By using this formula,
they can take action against the things that are not
working out.
Working Capital Issue
Startups have to wait for their big clients to pay up so
that they can manage their expenses. Entrepreneurs
must save at least the expenses of six months as its
working capital, which can help them in engaging new
customers and create a productive business pipeline.
Players can also avoid inadequate working capital by
cutting-costs up to twenty percent and set the cut out
as the working capital. For the startups that are yet to
make profits, should make sure that they are
adequately financed before taking any harsh decision,
which can affect their survival in the industry.
Non-consistent Cash Flow Issue
Most of the project-based business relies on their cash
flow, which further relies on the flow of the project and
the services rendered. It is therefore important for the
company to have a good business team ready to
connect new and reliable clients and projects. For the
company that does not rely on the cash flow, must
construct a flow of consistent cash flow at the proper
time. If the client is unavailable to pay on-time, the
businesses should think newer methods of client
engagement. They should be patient and make
decisions that would help them while dealing with the
clients in the future.
Another way of improving the cash flow is to get a
down payment for the product and the services
provided. This down payment will aid the companies in
| September 2019 |
54

57. 55
| September 2019 |
Editor’s Desk

58. covering the expenses associated with the project sales
and profit margins. Firms can also set a day in the week
to go through the accounts, payables, and checks.
Book-keeping Issue
Corporations can hire organized bookkeepers, which
can save a lot of time. If they cannot find one, they can
give this responsibility to one of its team member. The
firm can improve by distinguishing the discretion and
non-discretion spending. These include rent, office
overhead, inventory purchases, and wages. The
companies can even save further by polishing their
overall marketing plans. Identifying and creating a
larger clientele that can develop marketing strategies
can help in promoting the service and products. Firms
must set goals and expectations for marketing
initiatives and develop the tools to improve the revenue
outcomes.
Wrong Predictions and Revenue Issue
Businesses on a day-to-day basis have to predict the
company’s revenues. This is even truer for the
businesses that are dynamic in nature. Most of the
predictions can be measured on a month-to-month
basis. Although a lot of factors that are dependent upon
the revenue prediction, but mostly it rely on the
relevancy of the business. By foreseeing accurately, the
firms can generate good revenue that is crucial for the
cash flow statements. By paying attention to the
seasoned fluctuations and affected timelines, they can
predict the revenues accurately.
Hiring Issue
Hiring a good staff is not an easy task. A decision like
over-hiring can create additional costs for the company
in contracts and long-term employee liabilities. The
employer is responsible for its employees and they have
to provide them with the employee benefits that
increase the costs. The key solution lies in hiring the
term-based employees, freelancers, and independent
contractors as they will provide services only for the
time worked and employer do not have to add payroll
costs in paying them. These independent contractors
are paid only for their time spent on the work.
Depending upon the job, firms can easily find out that
whether these are perfect for the job or not. In return,
these can absorb the work-related wages and can add
the benefit of costs.
In eliminating the conundrums, the mind-power and
descision-making of the entrepreneurs is important.
They can seek loans and grants which are specifically
tailored towards boosting the company's finances. Even
some of the vendors allow the company to offer their
assistance and can refine the business debts. The
players should not haste in making a decision. They
should be thoughtful and intellectual for deciding the
expenses. It is important for them to think strategically.
They should be aware of their decisions and should
seek guidance in decision-making and in expenses.
| September 2019 |
56

60. STEPHANIE
LaTORRE
A TECHIE CREATING
BEAUTIFUL, FUNCTIONAL,
AND AFFORDABLE WEBSITES
FOR BUSINESSES
‘‘Your website can be
the best employee
you ever had, is it?
Stephanie LaTorre
Owner & Founder
EG Management
Consultant
| September 2019 |
58

61. sound leadership demands specific skills set and
Athose skills, when learned at right time, can
certainly create a difference. An entrepreneurial
journey of an avid leader, Stephanie LaTorre, aptly
exemplifies this. Her journey to become leader started
as a child. She had parents who were leaders. They
showed her the way. They taught her to read before she
entered grade school. They gave her books much more
advanced then she was supposed to be reading. They
used technology that others were only just starting to
think about using. They also taught her how to inspire
others and get a project complete. Stephanie use to
spend hours and hours watching them work at their
offices. In short, it was infused into her brain before the
age of 6.
This continued as she started working. When Stephanie
was 8, she was the best local babysitter one could find
on their block. She would come over and play with the
babies so their moms could do normal things like
shower and fold laundry in peace. It wasn't until she
was older that she realised that how valuable this
service she was providing truly was. Once she was of
legal age to work, she went and got a job in a law firm.
Opportunities came to her at such young ages and she
kept on grabbing them. Once she left school, this all
continued. She would interview for an entry level
position and be hired as an assistant manager. She
never shied away from the opportunities. She took the
challenge head on and with confidence.
It was this confidence that showed her how strong her
leadership abilities had become. She has spent years
and will continue to spend years learning to become
always a better leader and inspiration for others.
Currently, Stephanie is the Owner and Founder of EG
Management Consultant. She helps people create
websites that work for them. Initially, it took her years
to get to know her target audience. At first, she tried to
assume things about them. She assumed their fears and
likes and dislikes. This did not get her very far. It wasn't
until she really started going out and talk to her
audience and see them face to face that she really got
to know them. This was probably the most important
research she ever could have done to help mould her
offerings to help her audience. At first, she tested and
tried different models until she found the one that gave
them the best results.
There have been several big developments in her
business recently including wonderful new
partnerships that will allow her business to help many
more people in an even bigger way. While many of
these developments are still in their beginning stages,
their potential for greatness is on a bigger scale then
she could have ever dreamed. She can't wait to begin to
announce them in the future. She through her company
will be continuing to help entrepreneurs for years and
years to come.
Since childhood, Stephanie was surrounded by
technology. Since she was a child, she has had a
computer. She was one of the first to get a cell phone
and later a smart phone. She believes, technology is our
future and anyone who refuses to keep up with the
technology will be left behind. Every 3 to 4 years, she
gets a new cell phone and computer. She considers it as
an investment that allows her to live a life that others
don't.
Stephanie prides herself on making the technology
simple. Being a WordPress Expert and Digital
Marketing Mentor, she believes that WordPress is a big
monster that when learned properly can be the best
tool for businesses. As marketing has changed rapidly in
the last 10 years, there is so much to know and
understand. At the end of the day, all she does all day
long is click buttons on a computer. The only difference
she considers between herself and the people she
works with is she know where all the buttons are. Her
biggest contribution then is helping people know the
right buttons to push.
Describing today's business scenario, Stephanie
mentions that some of the biggest roadblocks she sees
in business today is people giving up too soon. This
happens when someone does not have the confidence
in their idea, or they are driven by a fear of failure. Thus,
in order to inspire other leaders, she says, "If you have
truly created something wonderful, there is nothing in the
world that can stop you from making it a huge success. You
find a way. You don't give up. You might change things along
the way, but you never ever give up.”
When asked about crucial traits every leader must
possess, Stephanie emphasized on the quality of
inspiring. According to her, in order to be a leader, one
must be able to inspire. In order to inspire, one must
have confidence. In order to have confidence, a leader
must know how to be themselves. This requires
spending time with yourself. It requires really
understanding who you are without the influence of
others around you. Stephanie spent six months alone in
Rome to get to know herself. Most of her life, she
allowed her decisions and preferences to be swayed by
others including family and friends. By removing those
influences, she was given an opportunity to really
understand who she was and what she liked. Knowing
this much gives one a confidence that others can see
and feel inspired to be led by.
EG Management Consultant
59
| September 2019 |