Brainlabs BPO Services
Our History
Brainlabs are a part of Brainlabs Group. The group was launched by 3 friends who
having distinct domain experience and rich industry knowledge in the year 2011.
Brainlabs division began its journey on March 2011. It is an Indian company with a
competence of IT enabled a service that incorporates BPO services. Initially the BPO
division was seated with just 5 numbers but it has grown to over 50 seats in 2012 itself.
Brainlabs is being recognized as one of the best offshore BPO in this short span of
journey.
Working Culture
Brainlabs offer customized top class IT outsourcing solutions that stands up to the
expectation of the clients all across the globe. Our services extend to countries like USA,
Australia, South Africa and European countries. We out-stand for our commitment,
honesty, hard-work, collaboration, openness and passion towards providing the best
quality driven BPO and call center solutions with skilled professional approach. We serve
in the areas of Business Augmentation Services (BPO Services).
With almost a decade of experience in the business it's easy for us to understand the
typical requirement of our clients thus helps us to provide the ultimate Business process
outsourcing (BPO) services in India. We analyze every requirement of the client carefully
and with the use of latest technology and trend, we provide cost effective BPO Solutions
from our facility in Chennai, Southern part of India. We offer unique and unparalleled
BPO services to our Indian and foreign clients. We at Brainlabs provide only reliable,
proved and reviewed solutions steadily in accordance with the changing market scenario.
The focus of Brainlabs is to provide skillful cost-effective Business Process
Outsourcing ( BPO) Services. Our comprehensive business method and our channel to
stay current with evolving fast changing industry norms has earned a huge number of
satisfied customers across the globe. We at Brainlabs not only serve International Clients,
our services extend to domestic customers as well and it is available 24 X 7 in all 365
days of the year.
Our Team
Our employees are our strength. Our professional and skilled team will strive hard to give
the best services to our clients. Our staffs at Brainlabs bring Talent and Technology
together to support our International clients by providing end-to-end offshore Business
Process Outsourcing services. Employees at Brainlabs stay longer in our company
because of our friendly atmosphere, care and support from us.
Our Vision
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Learn, improve and grow daily
Timely delivery
Professional and discipline in what we do
Dedication is our attitude
Our vision is to remain ahead of our competitors.
Our Mission
We at Brainlabs
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Learn our client's expectations to deliver the best.
Determine the best practice from the industry leaders to enumerate some value on
our offerings.
Aim to build happy customers in the global market.
Constantly improvise our systems, operational procedures & quality standards
through innovation / industry trends.
Learn to understand the social and country's responsibility.
We grow our Integrity, discipline, knowledge, health, wealth and way of life.
Social Responsibility
Brainlabs understands the importance of social responsibilities. Our participation in
social responsibilities includes the following:
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Help the society, country and the human kind.
Conducted eye donation, blood donation camps
Supporting orphanages, old age homes and natural disaster reliefs.
Our little contribution to save electricity, water and grow trees to save our planet.
DATA PROCESSSING
Word Processing Services many organizations today generate documents in
formats that cannot be widely distributed due to application restrictions - the target
either does not have the required application to read the document or runs a
different version of the application. With the emergence of net-friendly electronic
document formats there is a growing need to convert proprietary text based digital
formats into document formats that are independent of platform, application and
version.
Our Word Processing Service converts data in these proprietary formats to
universally accepted delivery formats such as RTF and DOC. The converted
documents are cross-platform, can be used with free downloadable viewers, have
compact sizes and can be printed with no loss in image or data quality.
Brainlabs offers professionally managed Medical and General Transcription
Services maintaining very high standards in providing patient information
management services.
Input Document Formats Paper / Scanned Images: A document is commonly
perceived to be paper. Paper documents are automatically converted to an image
format and are then further processed to create a text editable and text searchable
electronic document. E.g. TIFF, GIF, PDF, JPEG, and DjVu.
Output Document Formats Simple text conversion: This is the simplest and
most commonly used document format in both PC and UNIX environments. The
word processing software handles these formats commonly, although graphics,
document layout and character fonts are not permitted. E.g. ASCII, ANSI,
UNICODE
Application Specific Formats These are document formats are similar to the
original paper document having page integrity features. When formatted, these
documents are more versatile than simple text conversion as they are fully text
editable and searchable.
DATA MANAGEMENT (KPO)
Quality data is a prerequisite to every business process, market penetration,
customer relationship, business investment, and for virtually better decision making
across all levels of the organization. Therefore, organizations need to invest in
consolidating their master data assets.
Fortified with deep industry knowledge and expertise in managing data through
its entire lifecycle, coupled with comprehensive service offerings and proven track
record, Brainlabs delivers business value to several of world’s leading companies,
helping them competently leverage their data in key business decisions and processes.
• Data Normalization Services:
Data normalization helps you protect the integrity of your data against
logical or structural inconsistencies. Normalized data increases the stability of the
data structure, takes away the risk of discrepancies between different versions of
the same information, along with decreasing the data storage space, by
minimizing the amount of data redundancies.
At Brainlabs, with our data normalization services, we support you in
keeping your data accurate and relevant for effective business transaction and
analysis. We clean, format, standardize, verify and validate data to ensure correct
alignment and definitions.
Equipped with database experts, domain professionals, and wellformulated data cleansing methodologies, Brainlabs has demonstrated capabilities
in normalizing data from diverse legacy sources. We ensure that we accurately
assign the noun-modifiers, attributes and add right attribute values.
Brainlabs offers a complete spectrum of data normalization services
including rationalization of data, de-duplication of parts, extracting attributes and
capturing value, expanding abbreviations, and ensuring overall quality control.
Our well-established procedures can be adapted to the specific requirements of
customers to normalize the key fields in your data. It includes:
• Name and name components, such as prefix, suffix, epithet, honorary title, etc.
• Organization along with division, wing, area, etc.
• Job titles
• Job functions / grouping of job function.
• Normalization of supplier and manufacturer data.
• Data De-duplication Services
Majority of the massive amounts of data that organizations create in-house
is duplicate data. From the perspectives of data storage, retrieval, and/or running
an email campaign, duplicate data adds to the cost of the organization. To create a
meaningful set of unique records for streamlining their master data management
activities, organizations need to identify duplicates across several data sources
and get rid of it through an effective data de-duplication process.
Brainlabs has extensive experience in delivering data de-duplication
services. We have conducted the process of de-duplication for data of large
volumes and of varying complexities. Our basic process for data de-duplication
includes:
• Data Merging - Related data that is scattered is merged in this process
• Data Matching - Information on multiple criteria is matched to identify
duplicates
• Data Purging - Duplicate information that is discovered from the system is
purged to develop a clean database
Why Outsource the Task of Data Deduplication to Brainlabs?
Quality Assurance: Our Company and follow a stringent quality control
process. A dedicated QA/ QC team thoroughly scrutinizes the data for discrepancies,
ensuring that the final output sent to the client is free of any duplicate data.
Highly Trained Workforce Corroborated With Efficient Project
Management: We are equipped with a team of trained and highly skilled data
professionals with significant experience working on data de-duplication projects of
varying complexities. Every team is supervised by an expert project manager responsible
for ensuring quality and maintaining the timeline of the project. They update the clients
on a regular basis, and incorporate the feedback received from them.
Cost Benefit: Our data de-duplication services come at competitive costs
ensuring significant savings (in the range of 50 – 60%) for our clients.
Data Enrichment Services:
Brainlabs provides data enrichment services, which may involve sourcing content from various
sources. Alongside web research, we do manual sourcing in order to collect all possible critical
product information. Completely attributed data along with digital images, contact information,
and PDF documents are sourced.
Brainlabs can perform data enrichment by employing any or all the below steps.
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Data enrichment by sourcing manufacturer websites
Data enrichment by "manual sourcing" i.e. by contacting suppliers for additional data
Data enrichment by collecting additional data by "plant walk-downs"
By sourcing Manufacturer/Supplier website: Brainlabs adopts the followings steps to
enrich the data by using this method:
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List of distinct Manufacturers are compiled from the input data
For each Manufacturer, his official / authorized web sources are collected. This task is
performed by a separate team that is specialized in locating online resources.
Manufacturer website URLs, Images and Data sheets are recorded.
From the given input, descriptions are analyzed and appropriate Noun-modifiers are
assigned (as per the attribute schema preferred by client).
If required, data classification and data cleansing is performed based on the customer's
preference.
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Attribute templates are selected for the individual Noun-modifier combinations and
applied to the record.
Images are sourced, resized if required, cleaned-up if required.
Values are populated from the input and websites for these attributes.
Quality checks re carried out during the production process and before delivery
• Data Cleansing Services:
Brainlabs Data Cleansing/Scrubbing, Data Analysis and Data Enrichment services
can help improve the quality of data. These services include the aggregation,
organization, and cleansing of data. These data cleansing/scrubbing and enrichment
services can ensure that your databases - part and material files, product catalog files, and
item information etc. - are current, accurate and complete.
Data Cleansing :
Often the existing data has no consistent format being derived from many sources.
Or it contains duplicate records/items and may have missing or incomplete descriptions.
Brainlabs data cleansing process fixes misspellings, abbreviations, and errors. The data is
normalized so that there is a common unit of measure for items in a class, e.g. feet,
inches, meters, etc. are all converted to one unit of measure. The values are also
standardized so that the name of each attribute is consistent, e.g. inch, in., and the symbol
“ are all shown as inch.
Data scrubbing, also called data cleansing, is the process of amending or
removing data in a database that is incorrect, incomplete, improperly formatted, or
duplicated. An organization in a data-intensive field like banking, insurance, retailing,
telecommunications, or transportation might use a data scrubbing tool to systematically
examine data for flaws by using rules, algorithms, and look-up tables. Typically, a
database scrubbing tool includes programs that are capable of correcting a number of
specific type of mistakes, such as adding missing zip codes or finding duplicate records.
Using a data scrubbing tool can save a database administrator a significant amount of
time and can be less costly than fixing errors manually.
The issues involved in data cleansing, formatting, converting and preparing for
upload are so time consuming and so exacting that it makes sense to outsource select
components of the project to an established firm with extensive experience in data
migration.
Our capabilities for Data Cleansing/Scrubbing and Enrichment
services include:
• Data aggregation, organization, and cleansing
• Enrichment of data with product attributes, images, and manufacturer specifications
• De-duplication: eliminate duplicate records which might be similar looking records
• Identification of missing or incomplete data
We offer a cleansing service to clean and tidy-up your data.
Depending upon your requirements this may involve:
• The identification and removal of duplicated records
• The identification and tagging of similar records with subsequent manual review
• The removal of spurious and invalid records
• Data validation (for example using a post code checker to identify that addresses are
correct)
• The removal of obsolete data
• The comparison and removal of records matching third party information, such as the
opt-in and opt-out list
• Data Standardization Services:
The most critical step towards ensuring that your data is ready to be shared across
the enterprise, data standardization helps you make your data consistent and clear. Data
consistency affirms dependable output, facilitating the identification of related data using
common terminology and format. Clarity of data enables it to be easily understood by
even those who are not directly involved with the process of data maintenance.
Brainlabs can help you perform detailed standardization to eliminate any
inconsistencies in the data, and manage how your output appears. We’re experienced at
choosing the output terms, phrases, or particular attributes within your dataset. For
instance, your data may contain numerous forms of the word 'highlighter', appearing as
'hi-lighter' or 'hi-liters' in the input data. We can support you in standardizing the output
of all such terms.
Standardized data work effectively with other applications and systems, in the
organization, comprising CRM, ERP, MDM, eCommerce platforms and more. Equipped
with comprehensive data standardization competencies, at Brainlabs we use a
combination of cutting-edge data scrubbing, data matching and de-duplication
techniques.
With ground-level experience spanning more than a decade, and with virtually
every industry type, both in the domestic and international markets, we have dealt with
and straightened out almost every possible data inconsistency.
Employing our advanced capabilities, we can standardize data from any data domain,
including:
• Name data
• Address data
• Business data
• Financial data
• Product data
•Web Research/Data Mining Services:
Brainlabs extensive and comprehensive web research services, web data extraction, data mining services, online data
entry, data harvesting and screen scrapping have greatly benefited our clients globally.
As the biggest resource thesaurus in the world, the Internet contains an almost unlimited quantity of information. We can
extract URLs, titles, field texts from database, E-mail addresses, numerals, dates, as well as various kinds of pictures and
document files.
Web Research Services, Web Data Extraction & Data Mining Services
Brainlabs provides the following web research / web data extraction and data mining services:
• Data Mining:
► Data extraction and screen scrapping services to excel, access, MS-SQL or MySQL tables,
comma delimited file csv
► Web Search, address and email search, mailing list Search to search for contact details of
the specific target group
► Tracking, extracting, harvesting records and raw data from a screen or a web site
► Online research and building database in Microsoft Office. Gathering data from websites
to an Excel spreadsheet, Access .mdb file, or any structured database format.
► Web Mining and Listing. Searching the web and creating lists of target websites and then
collecting information from these sites.
► Web search and product research to populate the database for your e-commerce
websites/online stores
► Online Form Entry and Submission
► Marketing/sales support services, e.g. market research, survey and analysis, gathering
information about competitors’ pricing.
► Web Research and Online Data Entry or Web-to-Web Entry for updating your online stores
► Web Search and Listing, e.g. searching online newspapers for the latest pricing information,
or extracting and summarizing news stories from online news sources.
Methodology: Web Research, Web Data Extraction and Data Mining
We perform a preliminary analysis of your requirements and of the site to understand the data structure. According to the
complexity we will work on the method of obtaining the raw data from records, in rows and columns format and return
them to excel, Access or tables of SQLServer tables, comma delimited or text files. We'll use custom program to perform
a screen scrapping, or will manually extract the data.
A member from our professional team experienced in such online data extraction projects will communicate with you to
understand your specific requirements, and will continue to liaise with you for instructions, status updates and ensuring
timely deliverables.
We'll be more than willing to acquire new knowledge about your business and your requirements and we'll work with on
a sample/prototype project to let you evaluate our capabilities.
Typical Cases Web Research, Web Data Extraction and Data Mining
Copy the product information from an e-commerce site into database
The client is starting an online stores / e-commerce site to sell all products available on his supplier's site.
He needs all the product information from the supplier's website. The major challenge is that there are more
than 100,000 products on the targeted website and all products should be saved in the exactly same format
into a database (Access or any relational database) with all possible product information (i.e. name,
description, product details, SKUs, categories, shipping, price, etc.).
Further, the products on this site are separated into hundreds of categories and thousands of subcategories.
Some products directly belong to the main categories but many others are under subcategories'
subcategories. We need to understand and separate the specific category information for each product and
save the corresponding information into the product database.
This project requires extracting book IDs (ISBN) and information including book name, author, price, and
reader reviews etc. from an online bookshop website to a database format.
•Data Extraction Services:
An essential requirement for businesses dealing with large quantum of data stored in a complex manner in
diverse formats and locations - data extraction refers to the process of quarrying information from a pool of resources,
which is humanly analyzed later.Meticulously extracting, harvesting and exploiting information from diverse web sources
goes a long way into making informed business decisions.
Brainlabs offers wide-ranging data extraction services along with accurate analysis and timely reporting from a
variety of sources comprising databases, documents, images, and websites, etc., tailored specifically to match your
business needs. We can help you extract data from your customer databasesto explore demographic characteristics and
behavior of customers.We are skilled at extracting data from variegated sources and classifying them based on a defined
set of criteria. We can also publish your data into different formats simultaneously.
Overall, our data extraction activities can be broadly classified into the following:
Web Data Extraction
• Extracting data from primary and secondary web sources with regard to competitors, consumers and prospects,
market trends, etc.
• Mining meta-data information from websites
• Assembling, organizing and encapsulating all relevant information about your business by mining online news and
PR websites
Database Extraction
• Extracting data from databases by means of database queries
• Culling out vital data through various databases and database formats
• Conducting competitor price tracking and data research
• Extracting data from social networking sites, blogs and forums to recapitulate user/customer views and reviews
Process of Data Extraction at Brainlabs
Data extraction is a time consuming process. It can lead to loads of errors, if not conducted properly. Making use of an
extensive array of sources, Brainlabs can extract and deliver requisite information within a short turnaround time. Our
process of data extraction/ web scraping, includes:
• Capturing raw and unstructured data from the web
• Reviewing and filtering the obtained data sets, making it relevant
• Formatting the data, in accordance with the client requirements
• Arranging contact details and website URLs in an excel sheet
• Organizing and encapsulating the information, if required
Our professionals are proficient at extracting information for organizations, market research firms or price comparison
websites using subject matter blogs and market research sites. We offer a broad range of data extraction services
including scraping of web/html pages, semantic/syntactic scraping, extracting data from emails, PDF files and
databases, etc.
• Data Abstraction Services:
With our Data Abstraction Services, Brainlabs India assists you in distilling down your crucial
data from the available information sources, empowering you with all the critical information at your
fingertips. Our extensive Data Abstraction Services include:
• Meticulously reading, reviewing, extracting and aggregating the required information, specifics
and details from huge volumes of data
• Presenting the key points in a compact and concise manner with referenced section headings,
without losing any important data from the source document
• Making use of a variety of resources like web, printed files, documents provided by you, etc., to
search for your requisite piece of information
• Proofing, editing and rigorous quality checking for precise and superior output
Our data management team is adept at a wide gamut of Data Abstraction Services, including extracting
information about the businesses through corporate reports, production data, services / products documents,
customer details, in addition to research and academic data abstraction like biographic, survey results,
news abstraction, etc.
We enable investors and financial professionals through our specialized SEC Filing Abstraction Services by filtering
information about enterprises they are assessing for investment reasons. Our Lease Abstraction Services offer
solutions for commercial real estate managers and owners, making all relevant information readily accessible to them at
once.
•Data Analytics Services:
Through our Data Analytics Services, Brainlabs India helps businesses make insight-based business decisions. Tailored
to the specific needs of our clients, our data-driven analytical solutions help you discover new ways to drive revenue and
increase profits by converting your data into useful, perceptive and accessible information to decision-makers.
Our professional Data Analysts can synchronize our analytical solutions with the strategic, tactical, and operational goals
of your organization. Depending on your business needs, we can offer you Prescriptive Analytics making use of data and
models to optimize your forthcoming business decisions, Predictive Analytics to forecast probable future outcomes, and
Descriptive Analytics to make you future-ready by reviewing your past events.
We provide Data Analytics Services to companies across a range of industries such as Consumer Packaged Goods,
Retail, Banking and Financial Services, Insurance, Telecom, Pharmaceuticals, Manufacturing, etc.
Our data enhancement and analytics service offerings include:
• Business and Financial Research
• Effective Data Intelligence, Reporting and Presentation
• Market Research
• Domain Based Analytics in multiple verticals
Product Classification:
Brainlabs provides Data Classification services to the following Taxonomies: UNSPSC,
eCl@ss, SMD EGII, JPPSG, ECRI etc. In addition to these, Brainlabs can classify to any
proprietary schema as required, and additionally can assist in the creation of robust
domain-specific classification taxonomies.
The classification process is driven by subject matter experts. This ensures classification
to the lowest possible leaf level in any given taxonomy. Brainlabs has checks in place to
ensure consistency in application of codes. This is extremely important when the purpose
of the classification is done for Spend analysis. Consider the following examples:
By getting your data classified by Brainlabs, you can rest assured that your spend
analysis or other such applications will deliver the results.
Attribute Value Extraction:
Brainlabs offers Attribute Value Extraction services. This activity involves capturing
attribute values from input file or any other source like PDF / Legacy data / database into
pre-defined attribute set / template of a taxonomy or schema.
Brainlabs has significant capabilities in ensuring that the percentage of Missing Values is
minimal and well within pre-defined services level. Brainlabs uses several tools on the
Shop Floor to ensure consistency and a high level of accuracy. Brainlabs can also work
with a pre defined set of permissible values for any given attribute.
Taxonomy Services:
Brainlabs Taxonomy
Brainlabs has developed a data dictionary for describing item specifications known as the
Brainlabs Taxonomy to provide a consistent, reusable set of categories for a unified catalog of
products and services. It is a flat dictionary having several “Product Names” (Similar to a
commodity category) combinations. The category specific attributes are appended to items
classified under Brainlabs Taxonomy Product Name combinations, so that end users may make
informed comparisons of the generic, purchase essential characteristics of like items and
perform parametric searching on these values.
Brainlabs Taxonomy provides a credible alternative to other commercially available
taxonomies. It currently covers about 2000 most widely used Product Name combinations. It
has about 9000 attributes defined. Brainlabs is presently constructing example values and
definitions for each of these.
Brainlabs Taxonomy's category-specific attributes are designed to capture generic and
purchase-essential characteristics common to all items within a category. Proper value
population within Brainlabs Taxonomy's category-specific attributes enhances the finding
experience of end users by providing accurate and uniform purchase-essential information
with powerful parametric refinement.
Below given are example screenshots of Brainlabs Taxonomy when viewed through “Brainlabs
Taxonomy Viewer” application.
Development of a new taxonomy
Refinement (revision of hierarchy and attributes) of a customers existing taxonomy
Enhancement (addition of new categories) of a customers existing taxonomy
Maintenance of a company's existing taxonomy.
Content WorkBench:
What is Content WorkBench™?
Today, product information is a strategic asset, essential to the success of enterprise core
processes. Brainlabs Content WorkBench (CWB) enables organization to maximize such
benefits by providing end-to-end solutions to effectively create, manage, and leverage this
product content asset. Employing a Web-based architecture, CWB offers a comprehensive
environment for creating, managing, and preparing product information for eProcurement
needs.
Why CWB?
Catalog content management is a fundamental requirement of any purchasing organization in
an enterprise, that wants to, or already have implemented ERP/SRM solutions. Quality of
inventory data content is critical for efficient eProcurement and accurate spend analysis.
Companies want to have an efficient, scalable and cost effective catalog management system
to search, refine, create and to maintain product content in their inventory systems.
Brainlabs, with its rich experience in developing content management solutions has developed
a premium catalog content management system. Brainlabs's content WorkBench (CWB) is a
very well conceived, practical and cost effective solution for enterprise catalog content
management needs. CWB offers searching, creation and maintenance functionalities within the
catalog database. It can be interfaced with existing ERP/CMMS systems to provide seamless
content management capabilities within the client's business system.
Feature List
Powerful catalog search:
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Versatile search feature (Keyword, stock number, class, UNSPSC etc)
Automated fill-in suggestions for keywords
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Grid view of search results with images
Excel-like filters, sorting functions for search results
Detailed item views:
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Item views with tech specs, image, attachment etc in one-single view
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Cross-link feature across Model no., Manufacturer and Suppliers
Provision for legacy data view
Support for Brainlabs Taxonomy and SMD:
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Built-in support for Brainlabs Taxonomy with 'template selection' (Noun-Qualifier and
attributes)
Support for IHS SMD* with images
Support for UNSPSC:
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Built-in support for UNSPSC with a keyword and code search
Hierarchical views of UNSPSC
Latest version of UNSPSC pre-loaded
Wizard type new item creation:
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Step-by-step, wizard driven item creation feature
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Provision for Manufacturer and Vendor data banks
Emphasis on standardization and to avoid duplicity during item creation
Powerful administration and monitoring
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Built-in user management with 3 user levels
Tracking of changes done by user
Others:
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Support for interfacing with existing business systems
Support for training and future updates
Benefits
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Web based application, accessible from any where
Build a centralized product content repository for e-business
Aggregate and unify multi-supplier product content
Enable quick search of right item information
Reduce operational costs for product content maintenance
Meet data format requirements of today's business systems
Present accurate, detailed, up-to-date product information to buyers and internal
customers
Technologies
CWB has been developed on Microsoft based technologies. It is based on MVC architecture
(three tier) This gives it a high level of scalability and stability.
.Net Framework: 3.5 version
Front end: From end user's perspective, all they require is a simple browser to start off with
the CWB. The training time required is also minimal.
Back end: CWB supports both SQL Server 2005 and Oracle 10g.
Hardware and Software requirements:
Hosting Server: Recommended Intel Pentium IV and above processor with 1 GB Ram / 4GB
of Hosting space
Operating System: Windows XP/Vista/Server 2003
Web server: IIS 5.1 or above
Database: SQL Server 2005 / Oracle 10g
Browser: IE 6.0 and above
Contact us for more information on CWB, write to mail@Brainlabs.com
Spend Analysis:
Spending with external suppliers is the single greatest expense for most enterprises. Supplier
relationships also directly impact an enterprise’s product quality and overall responsiveness
and competitiveness in the market. However, the success of any supply management strategy
is largely dependent on the ability to access, organize, and analyze spend data. Spend data is
the foundation for effective supply management decisions. Hence the need for an effective
Spend management practice.
It is increasing observed that spend management practiced in organizations are not able to
yield expected results. The reasons for this are many. Most of the times it boils down to data
management issues. Unfortunately, few enterprises are effectively controlling their spend
data. At most companies, spend data resides in multiple, disparate systems and is not
classified to a level of detail that is useful for analysis.
Problems with Spend data management
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Spend data coming from disparate silos: Spend data is generated in different
types of transactional systems like AP, GL, ERP, MRP, Inventory, P-cards etc. These
seldom resemble each other in structure or capture.
Incomplete and unreliable information: Missing of data in key fields, like
descriptions, pricing, UOMs are common issues
Non-standardization of naming conventions: Same Vendor, but named differently
multiple times. Same part number in multiple conventions are atypical.
No structured classification to a commodity level: What about the "data about
data"? What does this data mean afterall? No easy way to tell this.
Lack of Analytical capability: Limited view of spend due to instinctive decisions.
Excel is the primary analytics tool.
How Brainlabs can help?
As seen above, data management issues ARE the biggest hurdle on the way of achieving
effective Spend management. Brainlabs strength is its data management capability. Brainlabs
can assist as a partner for enterprises in their spend management program, to handle the data
issues.
Schema Mapping:
Brainlabs provides a range of Schema Management services to allow eMarket operators
to outsource this function.
These services include:
Upgrading to new versions of UN/SPSC.
Mapping of commodity classification changes.
Data migration of existing content to different schema versions.
Handling of schema change requests by suppliers.
Brainlabs’s unique range of schema services allow eMarkets to focus on their core
business, reduce headcount and expense, and remove the need to maintain specialized
classification and content engineering expertise in-house.
Product Codification:
Brainlabs provides Product Codification Services, which include framing of Rules for
generation of codes for a Class or Category of Products. The Rules will be
comprehensive to include all executions of the products covered by that Class or
Category. The Rules will enable the Client to generate codes for any specific execution of
the Product for which the Rule is framed. For change in value of each attribute of the
product the Rule will generate a distinct code.
The Rules are framed in a format that will enable generation of a complete description of
the item by looking at the code and the Rule for the Class or Category to which the Item
belongs.
The Rule format can be adapted, if necessary, to be in line with the current codification
process of the Client.
IMAGING SERVICES
Djvu Conversion Over 90% of information in the world is still on paper, many with
colour graphics or photographs. Almost none of this rich content is on the Internet.
This is largely due to the fact that scanning such documents at readable
resolutions, such as JPEG, GIF or PNG formats, means having to deal with file sizes
too large for acceptable download speeds. Small sizes, on the other hand,
compromise on quality and therefore legibility.
DjVu is a new Image Compression Technology that provides an answer to
this, providing relatively smaller file sizes for high-quality images. What's more,
DjVu files can be viewed using free plug-ins.
The Document Factory creates high-resolution images of documents, digital
documents or photographs via the Internet or Intranet
Imaging Services - Acrobat PDF Conversion Converting documents into PDF
formats are a sure-fire way to ensure they stay future-proof. All scanned documents
can be converted to the following PDF formats:
• PDF Normal with fully text searchable with images
• PDF image + text - OCR'd text embedded over original image
• Full colour PDF-exact replicas of printed books
• SBlank PDFs
Imaging and Indexing
Generally, Imaging and indexing projects go together
Indexing is either field-based, or full-text, or a combination of the two.
Indexed field data make unique identification of documents possible. Adding other
indexing fields provides additional, controlled ways to access individual records or
groups of similar records.
Retrieval from index fields is consistent and accurate because it is based on
a controlled search vocabulary. Ideally, field indexing is performed at the point
when business documents are created.
Full-text indexes are created automatically. The software reads every word
of every document in a database and creates an inverted index of words and their
locations in the database.
End-users can search the database using any words and the system will find every
match between the search term(s) and the text of the documents. Full -text searching
makes it easy to locate documents when users are not exactly sure what they need.
Engineering & Process:
The integrity & quality of data has got direct bearing on the successful implementation of
Material management/Maintenance initiatives. Quality of purchase process is highly influenced
by quality of master data the organization is possessing. Companies have benefited by having
association with Brainlabs for successful material & maintenance management initiatives.
Brainlabs works with eProcurement/EAM implementation companies, suppliers, manufacturers
and supply chain integrators globally. Brainlabs has got pioneering expertise in providing data
service solutions for in different industrial sectors, like oil & gas refineries, petroleum,
chemicals, Manufacturing, IT products, office supplies, Steel, Power utilities etc.
Data Audit:
The Material holding cost forms the significant part overall operating expenses in the context
of manufacturing/processing industries. The materials can be segregated as direct & indirect
materials; whereas it’s easy to control direct materials coming directly from BOM (Bill of
material) managing the indirect materials is highly challenging & unpredictable. In this context
the integrity of material master holds the key for effective maintenance & material
management. The discrepancies/errors in the quality of the data have huge impact on the
supply chain cost in terms of excess inventory, duplication of efforts. Hence periodical
diagnosis of data quality is imperative exercise which an organization should undergo.
Brainlabs has got pioneering expertise in diagnosing the health of data & providing the
roadmap for improving the overall data quality. Data audit requires experienced well versed
domain expertise in digging out hidden issues in the data which Brainlabs has in its
engineering skill repository.
The data audit shall evaluate completeness of data-Quantitative data analysis i.e. data fill
rates, Duplicate item issues, inconsistencies in UOM, Conversion factor & Cost. Secondly data
audit shall also evaluate Qualitative judgment of data like extent of consistencies in
description, Part number formatting, different item numbers to same part numbers etc.
Benefits of Data audit:
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Complete data quality diagnosis.
Comprehensive qualitative & quantitative information of issues concerning about data
quality.
Approximate indication towards extent of duplicates in client input.
Provides the road map for data improvement process.
MRO Data Management:
Classification:
Hierarchical Classification is the first step towards proper spend analysis. Brainlabs has
developed right kind of proven domain expertise & content process knowledge to deliver high
quantum of deliverables with quality nearing to 100% in a comparatively short span of lead
time.
Classification & coding can be done to either global schema like UNSPSC, eClass, SMD, MESC,
ECCMA, or to custom build proprietary schemas.
Cleansing:
High quality cleansed engineering data shall enhance quality of purchasing decision. This is
because cleansed data shall provide purchaser with following due to greater amount
information extracted, abbreviations expanded, Manufacturer & vendor names normalized, and
data being absolutes rationalized & normalized.
Enrichment:
The input description from Legacy data may not be complete for all the items, & at times there
shall be additional scope for improvement in the quality of description. The enrichment
process shall ensure extraction complete information for procurement process & in building
complete quality long & short descriptions.
The process of enrichment shall involve in extracting data from additional Legacy data,
transactional data & Web scraping. Beyond the major value addition shall be ensured in the
through physical plant walk down process in the client location itself.
Benefits of Content Services:
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Elimination of duplicates in the client item master.
Easy and accurate identification of materials.
Complete rationalization & normalization of data.
Appropriate sourcing information.
The solid long description can be parsed & mapped into any customized templates or
pre-defined attribute.
Ready to use short description for SAP, ERP or any Material management system
implementation initiative programs.
Maintenance Management Services
EAM data Support – It is our belief that the plants should have all relevant data in position
before they are commissioned – like the Assets register, Criticality based asset maintenance
strategy, Preventive and corrective maintenance tasks, Maintenance schedules and the reports
to enable correct decision making. However it is not the case most of the times.
Brainlabs gives the following data support services to industries:
First time collection and posting all relevant data for the new EAM system to be operable
from day-one including the asset management strategy build – Green field projects
Migration from legacy system to a new system - Reviewing the existing data, restrategizing the asset management approach and updating the data to reflect the plant as of
today
Periodical review– say every 5 to 10 years - of the total asset management strategy in the
light of the past history, current trends, technology, safety and environmental needs
Day to day up keep of the maintenance data to keep the system data current a crucial step
to ensure right decisions – effective back office support
Executed with a combination of on-field supporters and offshore teams to exacting quality
standards.
Compliance data management
Compliance to Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS) and REACH directive is
an imperative comply to all Manufacturers, vendors and others who directly or indirectly deal
with electric and electronic manufacturing, distribution and other associated services. This
would require all of them to go through tedious documentation process to plan, organize,
gather and document the compliance requirements.
Brainlabs offers pioneered RoHS data collection services with its proven expertise and
experience in the domain of RoHS and REACH documentation related process. Our RoHS
experts from Electronics and Chemical domain background would perform data collection
activity like sourcing the material disclosure sheets, calling the manufacturers on behalf of the
client to secure information/documentation pertaining ROHS compliance details.
The information gathered from calling, manufacturer provided documentations, URL search will
be extracted and collated in the standard RoHS and Restricted/REACH reportable templates
with necessary vetting documentations from Manufacturer and other necessary
documentations will be submitted.
Besides the input descriptions, Manufacture name and Part number will be Cleansed and
Normalised.
Brainlabs would execute RoHS data collection projects in versatile custom specified volumes
on time bound basis.
Data Aggregation
Supplier data aggregation through a Brainlabs managed web-portal, for Supplier enablement
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Collection of Supplier information through a self-service, do-it-yourself portal
Collection of most current contact details, location details, banking details and taxation
details
Secured web portal (with SSL certificates) and individually assigned user names and
passwords for each Supplier
Detailed status dashboard, Reports on campaign status and customizable alerts
Bill of Material preparation
BOMs are used to identify and enlist all the components that are required to produce a given
product of a given version Brainlabs helps to verify and create Bill of Materials for newly added
materials and equipment.
SPIR
Brainlabs helps to verify and create “Spare Parts List and Interchangeability Record” (SPIR), to
obtain and maintain the spare parts information of equipment from suppliers in a uniform
format.