What sets Seer apart is its expertise not just in the front- end, but in the back-end as well. Over the years, Seer has also developed an expertise in seamlessly integrating front-end web and mobile technologies (iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and the latest developments involving HTML5) with a variety of back-end server components using Oracle (middleware and database) and Open Source technologies, whether deployed on-premise or on the cloud. This enables it to complement its customers’ mission-critical Oracle solutions with open and standards- based solutions based on Open Source Software, allowing them to take advantage of low-cost yet enterprise-class performance without sacrificing service levels – a key business edge especially during tough economic times.

Outsource setup, management and monitoring of your Amazon Web Services environment to us. We will support your EC2 instances including Operating Systems (Linux-based), Application Servers, Web Servers, and Databases (Oracle, MySQL and PostgreSQL)

https://aws.amazon.com/solution-providers/si/seer-technologies-inc

MANILA, Philippines — In order to reach out to more customers, Globe Telecom Inc. launched new online channels where subscribers can ask for after-sales support wherever they are at any time of the day.

Subscribers here and abroad can get real-time feedback from customer service representatives (CSR) who are on duty 24/7 through the chat functionality available on the Globe website or by adding the Talk2Globe account (Talk2GLOBECHAT) on Yahoo! Messenger.

Globe subscribers anywhere in the Philippines can also get assistance through SMS by texting HELP to 1234 for free.

These new channels feature faster response time to a specific customer inquiry, as well as uninterrupted and seamless service with a conversation tracking feature.

The new customer touchpoints are on top of the existing channels available for Globe subscribers such as the Talk2Globe Hotline via 730-1000 (toll-free via Globe Landline) or 211 (toll-free via Globe/TM mobile), official Talk2Globe social networking accounts in Facebook and Twitter, and the Talk2Globe e-mail account (talk@globetel.com.ph).

“Globe gets closer to customers using new service technologies that spell convenience, accessibility and faster response,” explained Joe Caliro, Head for Customer Experience of Globe.

“This gives our customers an opportunity to use their preferred channel to communicate with us, letting them enjoy talking to Globe their way with our widest range of self-service channels.”

Globe also launched *143#, a quick-service menu that allows subscribers to know more about the latest Globe promos at the touch of a button for free.

Prepaid and postpaid subscribers can access billing and load details, as well as call, text and surfing promos, do GCASH transactions, download related services and share prepaid load to Globe and TM users without having to memorize registration codes and access numbers.

All they have to do is dial *143# and press the call button on the mobile phone.

Furthermore, Globe set up an exclusive Visayan interactive voice response (IVR) system and deployed Visayan-speaking CSR agents based in Cebu to serve sales, after-sales, and technical concerns on broadband and landline services of customers in the Visayas and Mindanao regions.

The company partnered with Aegis People Support and Tech Mahindra, two of the top call center companies in the global BPO industry.

“This is a milestone not only for Globe but for our Visayan-speaking subscribers because they will find that when they talk to Globe, we are more responsive and there are no language barriers,” Caliro added.

Source: Manila Bulletin

In 2003, after nine years as a technology manager with Oracle in the Philippines, Joseph Benjamin “Joben” Ilagan co-founded Seer Technologies as a five-person consulting and software development start-up in Manila.

Today, he serves as president and chief technology officer for the company, which has grown to 34 employees and annual revenue of 34 million pesos (about $750,000). Three quarters of Mr. Ilagan’s business comes from Philippine companies. The rest is from international clients, including Yahoo! Southeast Asia and others based in Hong Kong, Singapore and Canada.

“We want to shift from pure software development services, where we are paid by time or by so-called ‘deliverables,’ to software products, where we get paid licenses, royalty fees or, as cloud-computing emerges, transaction or subscription fees,” Mr. Ilagan says.

That plan includes building more custom-made mobile applications for forward-looking organizations, no matter where they are located geographically.

One of their recent briefs: working with an interactive technology agency based in Montreal on a widget for Mac computers for a media brand. For competitive reasons, Seer’s client did not want its own client to know who built the mobile application. After delivering the project on time and on budget late last year, Mr. Ilagan’s firm has been collaborating with, and pitching for, more work from North America.

The Canadian company found Seer by word-of-mouth. “They asked some of their friends who already do outsourcing to the Philippines (because they heard that Filipinos are easy to deal with).”

The firm contacted Mr. Ilagan in mid-October and the project began in November. It took about 150 hours, for which he billed $30 (U.S.) an hour, to realize the product, which was launched in December. “I’ve heard from some of our current Canadian prospects that Filipinos are more customer-friendly and that they’ve fought and terminated engagements with service providers from another country because they were rude and there have been lots of unresolved issues,” Mr. Ilagan says.

Philippine software developers tend to charge more than from other source countries such as India, the leader in the industry.

The offices of Seer Technologies in Manila.

Seer has had a number of contracts working trans-nationally. For example, the Manila firm has been creating a Blackberry application for the Singapore publisher of the Miele Guide, Asia’s only regional and independent restaurant ranking system. But as his company expands, Mr. Ilagan has found that time zones can be a big challenge.

“Software apps development is very communications intensive. It requires a lot of interaction with IT department people, end-users, project sponsors, managers,” the Seer president says.

With the Canadian contract, there was never a personal meeting and most of the communication was by e-mail or instant messaging. With Manila 12 hours ahead of Montreal, this meant virtual exchanges from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m., or 8 p.m. to 9 p.m.

“For Singapore and Hong Kong customers, there are no issues with time zones,” Mr. Ilagan explains. “With Montreal, the challenge is the difference in time zones and the turnaround times in responding to written communication, but if we stick to small projects, for now this should be okay.”

Bigger projects involve more people on either side, making communications more complex and dragging out the number of hours before issues can be resolved and stages in implementation approved. This is a situation Mr. Ilagan sees clearly as he works with a client in Texas.

Greater complexity also means that Seer needs to work around common technology infrastructure problems in developing economies such as the Philippines. “If the system requires more software programmers on our end, I need to ensure that all of them have broadband access from home and they can participate in remote meetings,” Mr. Ilagan says.

So far, working with Canadians has proved to be a positive experience for Mr. Ilagan, who holds a masters degree in computer science from the Ateneo de Manila University, where he taught in the Management Information Systems faculty. “Culturally we are quite comfortable with Canadians. In a lot of ways, they are in fact easier to deal with than Filipinos. As long as contracts and written agreements are in place, it is easier to point out if certain tasks are ‘out of scope.’ Filipino clients tend to rationalize that certain things are actually in-scope even if they are not.”

Mr. Ilagan’s main advice to Canadian companies looking to outsource custom software development to the Philippines: Be patient when it comes to modes of payment (there are not a lot of options), make the most of virtual meetings, and adjust to the time difference.

“Filipinos have this thing called ‘malasakit,’ a word which is most closely translated into English as ‘compassion.’ Up and above what is agreed on in the contract, we go out of our way to make sure that the customer is happy, but if this is abused, it will hurt the Filipino company’s business and you may not see this company survive. So please be gentle.”

Special to the Globe and Mail

Alexandra A. Seno has written about economics and business trends in Asia since 1994. She is a regular contributor to Newsweek, the International Herald Tribune and The Wall Street Journal Asia. She lives in Hong Kong.

[Source: THE GLOBE AND MAIL]

 
Features
• Reviews of all 450 restaurants from 16 Asian countries featured in The Miele Guide 2009/2010
• Insightful country introductions and interactive features with detailed restaurant information provided:
◦ Address
◦ Telephone number
◦ Restaurant website
◦ Opening hours
◦ Accepted methods of payment
• Flexible search feature by:
◦ Restaurant name
◦ Top rankings
◦ Country and city
◦ Cuisine
• Map views showing directions on how to get to restaurants in all Asian cities (GoogleMaps will be required)
• Ability to detect where user is and recommend the nearest top restaurants from The Miele Guide (*Please note that this feature will only be applicable on GPS-enabled models.)
• Ability to mark favourite restaurants and plan your meal itinerary in advance

For more information please click on this link http://www.mieleguide.com/

Seer Technologies Inc., a 100% Filipino software development company known for its portfolio of enterprise software services, has ventured into the mobile applications space.

The recent unveiling of a BlackBerry app for Enjoy Philippines, the local edition of a global privilege card program that offers members hefty discounts plus various bonuses from leading hotels, restaurants and other lifestyle establishments, marked its entry into the rapidly growing mobile marketplace.

“Mobile technologies excite us and we see many promising opportunities there for the enterprise,” says Joseph Benjamin “Joben” R. Ilagan, Seer president and founder. “We are aggressively going into this field.”

Enjoy Philippines, meanwhile, is also excited by the prospects its smartphone apps are opening up (it also has an iPhone interface). Launched in June last year as the first international franchise of the Enjoy program which was started in Shanghai, the company sees the development of its mobile apps as a classic case of long-tail marketing.

“Numerically, the base of BlackBerry and iPhone users in the Philippines is small,” admits Alfie Sy, Enjoy Philippines marketing director. “But this is a base of consumers who are decision-makers, big spenders, business professionals and connectors – an influential group that we believe will have a multiplier effect on membership sales and the participation of new and better venues.”

Already, its mobile apps have enabled Enjoy Philippines to sign up a number of new merchants who will participate in its privilege program’s 2010-2011 edition. It currently has some 250 participating establishments in Metro Manila, Cebu and Boracay. (For more information on Enjoy Philippines, visit www.enjoythebest.ph).

Thanks to the EnjoyPH app for the BlackBerry that Seer developed, Enjoy Philippines was also able to bag the Globe Telecom account for the launch of the BlackBerry Bold 9700.

“This was precisely why we chose Seer to develop our BlackBerry app,” Sy says. “They have a talented team of software engineers who are not only committed to making EnjoyPH the best mobile app but who are also open to work on alternative revenue streams.”

Seer’s flexible and “very reasonable pricing” was another major come-on, he adds, since Enjoy Philippines, like most upstarts, have very limited resources to allocate to mobile apps.

Limited resources or not, Sy says their investment in mobile apps was well worth it as these are reaping huge benefits for the company.

“By making EnjoyPH for both the BlackBerry and iPhone available as a free download, it has also become a marketing tool for us,” he notes. “I see EnjoyPH being used by visiting tourists as a guide.”

For its part, Seer is likewise eager to further increase its mobile offerings which it sees as the next step in its growth as a software developer. Founded in 2003, the company began by offering high-level training, consulting and software development services to Oracle customers. It soon made a name for itself as a provider of high-quality back-end solutions that use a blend of Oracle and open source technologies.

“Early on, we decided to concentrate on the enterprise space, developing applications and solutions for businesses and other institutions large and small,” says Ilagan. “But while we have maintained this focus over the years, we’ve continued to grow and kept pace with the constant changes in the technology landscape.”

Thus, from the back-end of the software spectrum, Seer quietly expanded its services to cover the front-end as well, offering widgets for desktops and, now, interactive apps for hand-helds.

“Seer will continue to focus on its core competencies,” Ilagan says, “but we will definitely be venturing into other areas.”

At present, Seer, he points out, is concentrating a good part of its resources on the development of mobile apps. “We see tremendous opportunities for businesses in the mobile space and we are committed to helping our enterprise clients tap these for growth and profit,” he says.

Enjoy Philippines is one enterprise client that clearly shares Seer’s vision. “We are looking forward to working with Seer in making our apps available for a wider variety of mobile platforms this year and the next,” Sy says. “I sense a hunger in the Seer development team for delivering a user experience that is second to none.”

Source: Computerworld Philippines