Cogent IBS organizes its 2nd SAP Symposium

After the resounding success of CogSAP'08, Cogent IBS recently organized its 2nd Annual SAP Symposium for all its associates, at Courtyard Marriott, Southfield, MI on October 10, 2009. The highlights of the event were two panel discussions, remote speakers and live streaming. More details on the event can be found on our blog. Pictures and Videos are also available there in the blog.

Cogent partners with Ingentis to exhibit org manager!

HRT 2009 - The 12th HR Technology Conference and Expo was held in Chicago recently. Cogent IBS and Ingentis were present at the conference as an exhibitor in booth 222. It was a great opportunity for both the companies to come together and exhibit our products and services to a group of HR experts. We expect to generate some good relationships from the leads we got in the conference.

Cogent facilitates an Education session!

Sapphire 2009 was recently held in Orlando between May 11 and May 14. The Annual ASUG conference was also held along with Sapphire at the same venue. As an associate member, Cogent IBS had the opportunity to contribute constructively to the event. We made use of it by submitting a proposal under the Education sessions category for SAP HCM. Ganpy's topic on "Streamlining Payroll and Extracting meaningful data for Dashboard Analytics" was one of the chosen SAP HCM topics. He presented it on May 14. Vish Ganti, our Director for Business Strategy also participated in the event. The event turned out to be a good platform for making the right connections. Cogent continues to make the right kind of impact by participating in events such as this.

A day to celebrate and recognize achievers..

Cogent Day'09 was celebrated recently with pride and glory at Livonia Marriott, MI on January 17, 2009. The event was meant to recognize our success in 2008 and also to lay the road ahead for 2009. In spite of the bad weather, we had a good turn out and the event proved to be a great success, boosting the morale of proud Cogenters. A movie was premiered ("IT Slickers - The Legend of Golden Consultants") to mark the occasion. You can read more about the event in our newsletter (February 2009) & also check out the movie in our blog.

Quality of sessions prove that we have the best talent..

The first ever SAP symposium was successfully held in Troy recently and the quality of sessions showcased the talent warehouse that Cogent IBS is sitting on. It was a long day with 12 back to back sessions and at the end of it, one could sense a sense of accomplishment in the Organizers' faces. It was certainly not an event to be conducted in a day, given the amount of information being shared, but being the first time, Cogent Management decided to keep it a one day event. You can read more about the event in our blog & also check out the videos there.

First Ever SAP symposium for Cogent Employees

Cogent IBS announces its first ever internal SAP symposium geared towards knowledge sharing for all its employees.

CogSAP'08 is an SAP symposium, aimed at creating thought leaders within the organization. The day long event is also a platform for knowledge sharing where many informative and educative sessions are scheduled. The topics for the sessions are varied and promise to be very relevant for the current SAP market.

"Can't get more excited than this because, to be able to hold an event like this for our employees, has been in the planning for almost a year. I would term it as a Technical Symposium, where like minded people can come together and exchange notes. And socializing is not all that bad for our consultant community", says Ganpy, the lead coordinator for CogSAP'08. Overall, the event promises to be very exciting.

11th Annual HR Technology Conference and Expo

Cogent IBS recently announced that it will be an exhibitor at the 11th Annual HR Technology Conference and Expo partnering with Ingentis.

The HR Technology Conference and Expo in Chicago is an annual event which is the largest of its kind. A record number of HR executives and several other HR professionals attend this event, which is the single largest forum for learning about how Technology can aid an organization's HR processes. There are several executive speaking sessions along with several useful general HR sessions. The Exhibition floor offers the best collection of products that cater to various streams of HR within your organization.

Ingentis, Germany will be participating at this event together with Cogent IBS. If you are planning to visit the conference, stop by booth 759 where you can witness a live demo of our exclusive automated org charting solution, org.manager®.

Ingentis org.manager® - An Org Charting solution

As part of the recently launched BATS initiative, Cogent Integrated Business Solutions, Inc. is all set to enter the SAP product market space, thanks to the recently announced partnership deal between Ingentis and Cogent. Ingentis is a leading Software development company, based out of Nuremberg, Germany. Ingentis has a suite of tools & products, mainly catered to HR systems. Ingentis org.manager® is their flagship product and there are already over 300 customers who are using this tool in Europe.

Ingentis' org.manager® visual management suite provides real-time information about the organization in an easy to read graphical format. Charts and reports are updated automatically as the data in underlying systems is modified and the entire process requires virtually no manual intervention. This tool is easily customizable to work with all HRIS. There are a lot of SAP customers who are successfully using Ingentis org.manager® and this is where Cogent IBS hopes to achieve success.

The product is easily installable and highly visual. "It is the first of the many new dimensional challenges for Cogent, that the market is going to witness under BATS", says Ganpy. He also adds, "Working with a great team like Ingentis is inspiring and they are a fun lot to work with. Michael Grimm (Founder of Ingentis) and Thorsten Gorny (Marketing Director) are as excited as we are and they have been very kind, by making us their distribution partner for North America.".

"For me, this is like going back to school. I am excited about the opportunity and the product. Our SAP Consulting services experience in NA will help us take this strong product to the market successfully", says Vish Ganti.

"It is a great way to diversify. I have always believed in team work and this is an example of that..", says Srini Thonta, Director for SAP Solutions & Delivery, Cogent IBS.

Business Aid Tools for SAP (BATS)

Cogent Integrated Business Solutions, Inc. is all set to enter the SAP product development market space by the third quarter of 2008. The product development leadership team is currently engaged in strategic discussions about the roll out of what could be Cogent's next jewel in its crown.

"If everything goes as planned, we could actually be in a position to start demonstrating some of our principal product functionality to potential customers before the end of 2008", says Vish Ganti, one of the chief architects of the product launch effort.

"Although the exact product details cannot be revealed at this point of time, all I can say is that, this will add a new dimension to our perception of the market and the market's perception on us. The sooner we get it right, the quicker our value will be realized by our customers", remarked Ganpy, chief sponsor for this project. He adds, "Challenging ourselves continuously is the key to our success. Official announcements regarding this venture will be made soon".

Join SAP and SAP insider for an unprecedented Networking opportunity

SAP HR 2008 - This is an annual conference. SAP publicizes this event to be the most important event of the year for organizations that run and support SAP HR, Payroll, MSS, ESS, Benefits, Compensation, and Talent Management

Ganpy (Nataraj Ganapathy), Director SAP Solutions and Delivery at Cogent IBS will be presenting a session on uncovering the challenges around implementing SAP HR in a Concurrent Employment Environment (CE). This is a session under the 'Payroll and Taxes' Track on Day 3 of the event. Find below the abstract of the session.

Understand the effort required to process payroll in a concurrent employment (CE) environment

Take an in-depth look at the concepts of concurrent employment (CE) in SAP to learn how it facilitates processing of employees holding multiple assignments under a single personnel ID. Drill down into CE-specific payroll configuration, processing, and reporting functionality to understand the effort required to convert existing SAP Payroll activities to CE. Step through the payroll process in a CE environment to see how different assignments are integrated in both master data and configuration. Get tips to configure the new CE-specific personnel calculation rules, functions, and operations required to process payroll. Learn which payroll activities have been CE-enabled and how these new programs impact your payroll tasks. Drill down into the payroll cluster to learn where results for the individual employee assignments are stored before being rolled up into the Results Table (RT). Prepare yourself for the challenges of a CE conversion, and come away with tips to successfully handle master data and year-to-date payroll conversions.

Lights. Camera. Action. Cut.

Cogent IBS, Inc. recently celebrated its first "Cogent Day", an event to mark the successful completion of fiscal year 2007 and also to thank all its employees, clients, business partners, friends and families who have been very supportive of the company all these years. The event was held in Livonia Marriott (Near Laurel Park) in Michigan on Saturday, January, 19, 2008.

The inordinate success of this event has given us the momentum at the most opportune moment, to catapult on. If you were with us that evening, here are some snippets to linger on. If you missed the event, the snippets should give you an idea of what you missed.

When the bartender walked in with her wine caskets and beer coolers, exactly at 5:30 PM on Jan 19, 2008, there were some of us who were still busy giving finishing touches to the Cogent banners and the Cogent Creativity Club wall exhibits. The bombastic intro music ensured that all our guests were seated at their tables by 7 PM.

The next 40 minutes or so were filled with creative audio visual outputs that enthralled the audience who was least expecting it. An animated film, aptly titled “Journey of the Nerds” kick started the proceedings by humorously telling the guests, the story of the “inception of Cogent”. Vish and the promoters took the center stage then, to present the “State of the Corporate”, in an innovative way. The launch of “The Spirit of Cogent”, our theme music, concluded the first part of the evening.

The guests enjoyed a wholesome meal, followed by awards ceremony. Employees and Business partners were recognized in five major categories - Client Service Excellence, Back-office Excellence, Creativity, Team Building and Ecosystem Eminence. We also had the great privilege of four distinguished guest speakers sharing their general experience with Cogent at different levels.

Roger Miles, Veeresh Nama, Loknath Sriparavastu and James Jeon were the guest speakers and they all had worked with Cogent in different capacities - as clients, business partners, advisors and well-wishers.

What is a celebratory event without music and dance? The tempo and the mood of the crowd took an upward turn, once we set our dance floor up and started playing some foot tapping music using our in-house DJ system. The next hour or so saw some excellent club dancers and club dancer wannabes, all swinging & swaying alike, letting their inhibitions shed for the cause of Cogent.

12 Risk Management essentials every SAP customer now needs to know
The correlation is clear: Vigilant risk management leaves your business in good standing with shareholders and boosts potential profits. Ineffective risk management leaves your business exposed and hides potential opportunities. Executives are becoming acutely aware of this, and none want to be caught off guard.
But implementing limited-scope practices that address risk at only the highest levels - or assigning a department to identify risks in an ad hoc project - does very little to address your business exposure and lost opportunities. Many executives don’t understand how to approach risk management strategically. Others don’t have risk management capabilities at their disposal; they lack tools and metrics to analyze risk/reward trade-offs and proceed accordingly.
Risk management does not happen only at the board level either. Risks and opportunities clearly exist throughout all levels of the organization, across all business processes. Consider the various internal teams and partners involved in your supply chain. Do they have collaborative indicators to apprise them of goods delays, outstanding duties or taxes, or import/export license renewals? Chances are, they don’t. But implementing these types of controls to warn of actual or likely risk events can reduce the impact of the event. Once controls are in place, you not only minimize delays and penalties, you also realize strategic gains: Money previously lost to fines or production delays is now available for strategic investment. The very same information used to assess risk and provide early warnings proves invaluable to logistics and inventory optimization. Early warnings can help in managing customer expectations, thereby preserving your customer base. So it’s not just risk mitigation that’s driving the demand for risk management tools. These benefits of risk management also account for the strong demand.
Remember, all loss events negatively affect the bottom line. Plant managers, safety managers, product development teams, HR, customer service, and sales teams all have to contend with loss events - and all stand to benefit from a better understanding of risk factors in their planning and optimization activities. The common challenge I see is that nearly all of these organizations are ill equipped to evaluate and manage risk. And whatever measures are in place are often isolated from risk management initiatives across the company. So I’m now seeing high demand, across the board, for risk management tools. At the same time, there’s an awakening to the fact that risk doesn’t confine itself to nice, neat silos. There are lots of interdependencies, and at the top of the corporate ladder there’s a need for integrated risk management that spans all areas of the business - and for an understanding of the relationships that bind those areas.
Companies need a systematic way to identify, evaluate, and manage risks across all phases and facets of their business. That’s why we’re now working with so many customers, helping them forge a GRC initiative that provides a unified approach to corporate risk across their enterprise.
Risk Management Considerations Every SAP Customer Needs to Understand
01	DO openly support risk management at the executive level and make it a part of the company culture.
02	DON’T make risk management a one-time or theoretical exercise, one that’s considered unimportant to executives.
03	DO look at the interplay between different types of risks: strategic, operational, financial, human capital, hazards, and natural disasters.
04	DON’T limit your risk management activities to reactive contingency plans.
05	DO establish a common infrastructure, a set of metrics, and even a language for your risk discussions.
06	DON’T overcomplicate the risk management process. For risk management to be adopted by everyone, it cannot be perceived as an experts-only function.
07	DO ensure that all key stakeholders collaboratively share the responsibility of identifying, mitigating, and managing risk across processes. It’s better to have several thousand keeping an eye out for risk rather than a few dozen.
08	DON’T make risk management an isolated function or leave it to a single department.
09	DO look at risk as part of your strategic business planning and operations processes. Incorporate risk management in planning and budgeting by identifying key risk indicators that can be tracked as you implement strategy through your day-to-day activities.
10	DON’T separate risk from how you run the business.
11	DO make risk consideration a part of corporate performance management to understand the upside of business decisions and recognize the impact of poor risks.
12	DON’T leverage risk management tools only at the lowest operational level merely to mitigate risk.

Tech-Ed - Networking all the way....
SAP TechEd '07 Las Vegas achieved record attendance with more SAP technical experts, customers, partners, and employees than ever before converging to learn, network, and collaborate at this outstanding SAP technical education experience. What happened in Vegas was captured in video highlights that you won't want to miss.
Here's what a few of our attendees had to say:
"It was an excellent mix of SAP expertise and user experiences."
"Best conference to go to."
"Very good. Learned a ton."
"Excellent experience -- by end-of-day Thursday, brain was on overload."
"Can't wait to attend next year."
Cogent IBS was represented by Srini Thonta and Vish Ganti on all 5 days at the Tech-Ed. The event itself was a big one for Cogent as it was a great platform for the company to showcase its budding presence in the marketplace. More than anything else, this was a great opportunity for both Srini and Vish to go and connect with many like minded vendors, customers and practitioners.
The Demo Jam which gives opportunities to developers to demonstrate their no-holds-barred inventions with a competitive spirit. The six finalists of this year’s demo jam were:
	SAP's Unified Key Mapping Service (UKMS) Powers BP's Key Translations, BP
	Healthy Production Systems, Procter & Gamble
	Revolutionize How Business Workers Use SAP To Complete Everyday Tasks, WorkLight
	Supporting the Data-Driven Presentation Needs of a Large, Distributed Sales Force with XP3 and SAP NetWeaver BI, Interactive Edge
	Enabling of Next Generation B2B by Web 3.0, SAP
	Widgetize Your SAP Data, SAP

Methodology - The fulcrum of all project work

Successful projects and Unsuccessful projects are differentiated by how successful they were in following a methodology and how robust the methodology was, in guiding them to their goals.

There are many SAP projects that are managed without enough insights been given to the methodology. And even when they do, sometimes they are not managed well. Cogent IBS, having created a unique reputation for itself for delivering its projects in a systematic way, announced recently that it will be rolling out its own methodology for all its implementations and support work beginning 2008.

"It is the result of all our experience, lessons learned and our passion to build something that will not only help our customers but also let them know when they go out of their boundaries. Lot of times, projects lose direction when they don't know they have stepped out of their limits. EAVS * (Enterprise Application Value System) is a robust framework that can be used for all kinds of SAP projects because the framework itself demands you to draw the boundaries before you start using it", says Ganpy Nataraj, the architect of EAVS.