A proud member of ...

The Ascendum Story

QUESTIONS

  1. Who is Ascendum? What do we do?
  2. What is Ascendum's history? How did it become such a large firm? 
  3. How does Ascendum position itself as a global firm?
  4. What is Ascendum's stand on onshore vs. offshore strategy and global delivery/implementation methodology? 
  5. What does Ascendum mean by "Unique, Flexible, Engagement Models"? 
  6. How does Ascendum and its financial engagement models differ from the approaches advocated by large IT Outsourcing companies?
  7. What can Ascendum offer to a small company, a mid-sized company, or a large company?
  8. It's rare that one company can serve all market spaces; small, medium and large. What is at Ascendum's core competency that allows it to serve a range of companies in such a unique, flexible manner?
  9. What are the intellectual property-based (IP) solutions from Ascendum and its sister companies?  
  10. Given its impressive line-up of sister companies, what is Ascendum's commitment to being agnostic towards technology evaluations?


ANSWERS FROM HERE

1. Who is Ascendum? What do we do?

Ascendum is a global information technology (IT) solutions company that delivers "Technology Inspired Solutions to Business Driven Challenges". Ascendum works with small, medium, and large firms, including many Fortune 1000 companies, to help them solve business challenges. Asendum's approach is built on the success of using the right combination of Strategy, People, Processes, Technology, and Infrastructure for each client situation, to meet the specific business needs/challenges of each client and deliver exceptional results.

Headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, Ascendum has sales and support offices in Dayton, Hamilton, Round Rock (NJ), Shelton (CT), Bangalore (India) and Ahmadabad (India). Ascendum is part of a global IT investment holding company called Vora Ventures group.

2. What is Ascendum's history? How did it become such a large global firm?

Ascendum is the combination of multiple, culturally diverse companies that specialize in different core competencies. Ascendum acquired Cincinnati based Professional Data Resources (PDR), with a 25-year history of delivering the highest-quality client satisfaction and customer loyalty.

Another, also acquired, Bangalore based Ascendum Systems Private Limited, also known as AnswerPal Systems, which for nearly a decade developed and delivered complex offshore and dual-shore Product Development solutions. Included in this merger was also Bangalore based Garnet Solutions - a high-technology start-up firm that focused on delivering intellectual property-based solutions in Europe, India, and other parts of Asia; a Microsoft Dynamics platform partner and implementer.

Based on those combined experiences, Ascendum today has both the depth and breadth to handle a wide variety of information technology projects in onshore-only settings (wherever the customer is), offshore-only settings (wherever the development resources are), and dual-shore settings (where the resources and customer are closely aligned, regardless of location). We use resources from our worldwide locations that make the most sense for each client engagement. 

3. How does Ascendum position itself as a global firm?

Ascendum's role as a global provider spans several key areas:

  1. Ascendum provides global infrastructure to support and deploy IT solutions, including secured global network centers, hosting and disaster recovery centers, and call centers. Ascendum has invested a tremendous amount of resources and time in a global infrastructure for global software development. At Ascendum, a member of the development team can be anywhere in the world and participate coherently in the process.
  2. Ascendum's global talent pool enables customers and partners to take advantage of skills across numerous core employee competencies: region/location, cultural background, experience, technical skills and labor (cost) arbitrage. These resources are available to customers worldwide. Ascendum employees are skilled/trained to perform a wide range of IT services, from information technology-based application/solution development to business process outsourcing to management consulting.  Ascendum's recruiting efforts match the core competencies of each employee to the needs of each specific project.
  3. Our global customer and partner base (Asia, North America, Europe) provides numerous opportunities for education, improvement and enrichment.

4. What is Ascendum's stand on onshore vs. offshore strategy, delivery/implementation methodology?

Ascendum does not believe that (a) all projects are suitable candidates for offshore implementation, or (b) everything should be implemented onshore.

Instead, Ascendum deploys a very pragmatic strategy, driven by the customer's best interest, to decide where to conduct each project (onshore, at the customer's location, offshore, a dual-shore combination, etc.).  For example:

  • Projects that have extremely well-defined requirements are ideal targets for offshore delivery
  • Projects that require tremendous interaction with employees, vendors, partners  and customers of the client, are better suited for heavier onshore delivery components
  • In reality, the majority of projects should use a combination of functions that should be performed onsite, onshore, as well as functions that can be performed offsite, or offshore
Ascendum makes these recommendations based on certain key criteria: specific functionality, end-user/customer interaction, status reporting requirements, skill sets available at various locations, budget, etc. From these five or six factors, we recommend the best solution for our customers instead of force-fitting our internal availability of talent at our various global locations.

In addition, Ascendum advises and educates its customers to factor the (a) short term cost of communication, and even a little loss of productivity associated with diverse cultural background and time zone differences associated with offshore (global) delivery models and (b) long term benefits of creating diverse global teams, round the clock, agile development, cost benefits and risk mitigation.

Our tag line is "Rise Together" - together with our customers, employees (worldwide) and shareholders. This forces every member of the Ascendum team to make the best decision in the interest of our client's success.

5. What does Ascendum mean by "Unique, Flexible Engagement Models"?

Ascendum is one of the few companies that is willing to, and can afford, to offer a flexible range of engagement models to its customers. These models are built on flexibility (to match client and/or funding/budget size), transparency (to build long term relationship) and risk sharing risk/rewards with clients ensuring that WE RISE TOGETHER.  They include:

6. How do Ascendum and these financial engagement models differ from the approaches advocated by large IT outsourcing companies? 

Large but Small - Ascendum is part of one of the largest private equity groups in the Midwest and hence has tremendous financial backing and stability. At the same time, it is a mid-sized firm built on the concepts of quality, speed, and personal care. These attributes are very hard to find with large organizations.

IP Bank - Ascendum also has a portfolio of intellectual property platforms and companies, so-called Ascendum sister companies (family of Vora Group companies). Larger IT firms have not developed their own platforms to create Ascendum-like composite solutions.

Right Motivation - Unlike many large IT outsourcing firms, Ascendum has a history of working with small- and medium-sized firms and is designed to do so effectively. These large IT Outsourcing firms primarily target taking over your clients' entire IT budget/team and have little interest in solving immediate challenges with small projects that can make an immediate impact.

Flexible Models - Ascendum prides itself on personal attention and offers built-in processes that are flexible and able to adapt to perceptions and evaluations at any point in the process/engagement.

7. What can Ascendum offer to a small company, a mid-sized company, or a large company?

Most IT outsourcing companies are simply not motivated or equipped to be true business partners, to be a true software development partner, or to be a true solution development partner like Ascendum. Ascendum offers unique solutions depending on the size and the sector or domain of its client base including:

High tech start-ups and early-stage companies. Small and early-stage Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) have unique challenges: they have limited budgets, tremendous competitive pressures, survival issues, little or no tolerance for failure, and a lot at stake.

Software development at market price is not even an option for many start-ups or early-stage companies.  They say, "always remember where you come from." Ascendum and the Vora Group have a deep appreciation of the needs of such early-stage and start-up companies.

Ascendum offers creative engagement models (subject to qualification) to small companies. Upfront development costs can be minimized. Firms can deploy many product versions in the marketplace at a rapid pace, an "agile software development process" that delivers and evolves over time to enable appropriate funding, customer input and quick time to market.

Mid-sized companies: For mid-sized companies we offer a more traditional model, such as a time-and-material basis model, or for longer/larger projects, a Global Development Center. Many times, Ascendum can also offer non-traditional software solutions, such as investment in a platform that has 70%-80% of what customer needs and rest needs to be customized with trained resources. Our Solutions are as endless as the possibilities that customers are willing to pursue.

Large Companies: For large companies, Ascendum offers a global advantage. We help companies with a globalization strategy, both for in-sourcing and outsourcing. Options range from the Global Development Center, a JV, a shared risk/reward model etc.

8. It's rare that one company can serve all market spaces; small, medium and large. What is Ascendum's core competency that allows it to serve a range of companies in such a unique, flexible manner?

Ascendum's philosophy is to solve customers' business problems by choosing the right combination of strategy, people, processes, technologies and/or infrastructure.

While Ascendum takes responsibility to solve the business problem, these components of a solution may come from Ascendum itself, from Vora family companies, or third party industry partners. In that sense, Ascendum offers collective pieces of a puzzle - Ascendum represents the technology, services and intellectual property platforms from its sister companies (under the Vora Group) worldwide including infrastructure companies, IT services companies, and a business process outsourcing (BPO) company.

Ascendum does not believe in reinventing the wheel. We believe in delivering more for less and faster than our competitors. We use standardized software, as much as possible, whether those from our own intellectual property pool or from industry-standard third party platforms.

Ascendum believes in partnership. Ascendum has formed strategic partnerships with multiple independent software vendors (ISVs), infrastructure service providers (ISPs), and domain-specific management consulting firms (i.e., healthcare experts to solve a healthcare domain problem).

Ascendum also prides itself on its culture, values and its people.  It is a dependable large company with nimbleness, quality, speed, and flexibility. It promotes a relentless commitment to do the right thing, and yet not suffer from paralysis by analysis. At Ascendum, efforts are appreciated and results are rewarded. Ascendum's core philosophies include:

  • Work hard, play hard
  • Aggression with ethics
  • Frugality with class
  • Creativity with discipline
  • Humility with confidence
  • Quality with speed

9. What are the intellectual property-based (IP) solutions from Ascendum and its sister companies? 

Ascendum's portfolio of IP based solutions is threefold. First is Ascendum IP platforms (IP form the Vora Group of Companies), third party (or ISV) IP platforms and a portfolio of composite solutions.

Ascendum IP Platforms: These include intellectual property (software) platform(s) from the Vora Group companies. Referred to as Asendum's own platforms, includes:

  • Bluespring: a business process management software platform from Bluespring
  • Vinimaya: an intelligent agent based B2B Search and smart procurement platform Vinimaya
  • LBD: a learning-by-doing learning management system whose elements enable customers to deploy rapid cost development and training software
  • Ascentive: Automated data backup and disaster recovery solution

Third Party (Partner) Technology/IP Platforms: These include proven, industry-standard platforms, such as Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and others.

Ascendum's Composite Solutions represent a unique approach in the IT industry.  As defined by Ascendum, a Composite Solution uses standard technology, a proven intellectual property platform, but is designed to solve a specific business problem. At 60%-80% completion for general end-users, a Composite Solution allows customization for the specific customer issue/environment (e.g., integration with customer applications, network and databases, addressing unique business requirements, or particular features that are not available in an off-the-shelf package). 

Most of these composite solutions are built from the Ascendum family of intellectual property (i.e., Bluespring, Vinimaya, Ascendum, Ascentive, 8e6 Technologies, etc.). Click here to read more about the portfolio of Ascendum's Composite Solutions.

10. Given its impressive line-up of sister companies, what is Ascendum's commitment to being agnostic towards technology evaluations?

Ascendum's baseline commitment is a promise to solve a client's business problem by using the right strategy, people, process, technology, and infrastructure combination. To an outsider, Ascendum's significant investment to its sister companies' platforms and solutions might seem to give them an advantage. But Ascendum makes an absolute commitment to pull together the best solution for any given client for any given problem. Ascendum bases its solutions on its knowledge of customer needs, its knowledge of available platforms and solutions in the marketplace, and its knowledge of available competitive services and infrastructure.

Ascendum works with a large number of technology partners, technology infrastructure and management service partners that are not Vora Group companies, and it has invested significant effort in learning and integrating with these partners.