Rogue Method, Inc. - Custom cloud-based, desktop and mobile application software

Rogue Method

noun: a team of professional technologists and business analysts devoted to solving enterprise business process challenges and realizing opportunities through the development of Business Process Automation (BPA) software systems and mobile applications.

verb: a method of software design, development and implementation that is aligned to the vision and goals of an enterprise. A method that relies on insight, creativity and remarkable service to overcome challenges so that enterprises can execute their strategies and business plans.

Enterprises with software systems that fail to provide uncompromising support of their business processes cannot execute their business plans, causing them to fall short of their potential or fail altogether. Rogue Method is focused on helping enterprises solve these issues, so that systems once considered liabilities can be transformed into valuable assets that support business process and efficient operations. Correcting flawed systems or implementing new BPA systems help enterprises do more in less time and with fewer resources, improving revenue and profitability, and allowing your business to differentiate itself from the competition and compete more favorably.

Similarly, enterprises that have not adopted Mobile Applications can limit their reach and interaction with customers, vendors and employees. They are perceived publicly and internally as stagnant, dated and find themselves standing idly by while their competitors realize opportunities and achieve success. Enterprises who embark on strategic, focused and well-executed use of mobile applications strengthen their brand, realize tangible value and ROI and can have nearly limitless reach and interaction by redefining the where and how of their business model and operations.

What We Do. In short, we write software that helps you run your business at peak performance in today's increasingly competitive marketplace. We listen to your needs and create the exact toolset that you need to get the job done — and stay a step ahead of your competitors. We are platform-agnostic developers who specialize in integrating open source, commercial and custom solutions to continually provide the best balance of licensing cost, effort and flexibility for complex, mission-critical projects. Our strong foundation in software development allows us to integrate and adapt to nearly any platform or software suite. So whether it is Oracle, Microsoft or SAP, our flexibility allows us to provide nearly unlimited options for our clients. We let the business requirements and project demands drive implementation rather than a particular suite or platform.

Business Process Automation Systems

Mobile Application Development

Business Analytics and IT Consulting

The ongoing challenges of the global economic environment and shortcomings of ERP systems have fueled the adoption of BPA systems.

The universal mandate from management is to identify and resolve inefficiencies, discover new ways via process and systems to do more with less and to implement these solutions without losing focus on their core business. We recognize that ERP systems, such as SAP and Oracle, are the necessary data and transactional backbones of enterprises. However, management has realized, often quite painfully, that ERP systems have significant shortcomings that can hinder the enterprises business plan.

Business Process Concessions: ERP systems are marketing as complete solutions that deliver all the needs of an enterprise. And although that may be true on paper, the reality of ERP implementations can be quite different. ERP systems are designed to accommodate many industries, which requires that the product be homogenized. When an enterprise is forced to accept the system as is, including the pre-defined and confining business processes and controls, the system ends up defining their business process instead of the business.

Inadequate Support of Day-to-Day Operations and Process: Although ERP systems are the backbone system for an enterprise, they usually fall well short of supporting industry or enterprise-specific day-to-day operations. Enterprises faced with this reality are left to make concessions and implement tedious manual processes. Even when other systems are implemented to these last mile missing components, they are often unable to integrate with the ERP system. The end result is a bottleneck of inefficiency that can distract the enterprise from its primary mission and goals.

Time and Cost: ERP systems are notorious for having long implementation timetables and high costs. Secondary modules often demand 7 figure licensing costs, consulting fees and an equally lengthy implementation. Although management is required to pursue the main ERP modules, these secondary modules can quickly lose their ROI due to time and cost to implement.

Recognizing these issues, management and IT teams have retooled their expectations of ERP systems and are increasingly looking to BPA solutions to fill in process or efficiency gaps that deliver tailored solutions that mirror their business process. Most importantly, they understand the strategic and competitive importance of having software systems tailored to support their business, rather than having the business adapt to support the system. Rogue Method builds BPA systems that work in coordination with ERP systems to help overcome these issues and ensure all systems work together seamlessly on behalf of the enterprise. We recognize that, in addition to functionality, features and user experience, the time and cost to implement can be critical factors in the success of a BPA initiative. As a result, we offer a number of ways to approach projects that address concerns over scope, integration, time to implement and budget.

Build New Systems: Creation of new software systems that define and automate complex, often mission critical, business process. These systems contain numerous interconnected modules that align with business workflow, departmental process and have key integration points with ERP or legacy systems for transactional or master data. These systems normally have complex data processing engines, online and Excel-based reporting, business controls and review mechanisms. The workflow and GUI are custom designed and engineered, in cooperation with the key stakeholders, to ensure the application strikes a balance between simplicity, intuitive use and the requirements of the business process. The end result is a high visibility mission critical system that is relied on by a variety of internal and external end-users and meets the demands of management, legal, finance and auditors.

Modify Existing Systems: Sometimes, modification or expansion of an existing system makes more sense than to build a new system from scratch. This can be the best approach from a cost, time to implement or risk management perspective. In addition, an interim refinement of an existing system, can be an important milestone of a future initiative to build a new system, by being a proving ground to help flush out outstanding process or requirement issues. With the proper vision, planning and execution, a once broken or unworkable system can be completely resuscitate into a mission-critical workhorse system.

Connect Legacy Systems: On occasion, the root issue of a dysfunctional business process resides with disjointed or non-existent communication between existing legacy systems. Often, communication can be corrected or created using standard protocols for communication, such XML, SOAP or simple flat files. In more complex situations, we design and build middleware modules to perform data translation, filtering and pass-through of your mission critical data.

Although mobile enterprise applications have not experienced the same rapid adoption curve of consumer applications, we believe that we're entering a golden age for enterprise mobile applications. In recent years, we've seen significant advances in tablet and smartphone performance, increases in broadband Internet connectivity, widespread Wi-Fi availability and 4G cellular networks. These advances, coupled with the availability of enterprise-class security and mobile device management suites, have brought about the right environment for enterprises to integrate mobile applications into their operations. And the rapid adoption of the Android platform and supporting hardware have given enterprises a formidable alternative to Apple devices and the iOS platform for those enterprises hesitant to adopt Apple products for competitive reasons.

Enterprises should look to mobile applications to help increase efficiency, expand the range and reach of their business and redefine how they interact with customers, vendors and employees.

Expanse: Due to numerous connectivity options and nearly unlimited availability, conducting business and interacting with customers is no longer restricted to the office. Leveraging Mobile applications allows employees to interface with complex business process systems off-site where decisions are made and data is exchanged. The benefits of which can be reduced errors, greater efficiency, less travel, less hours on administrative tasks, improved employee morale and improved perception of the enterprise's brand. For these reasons, the ROI of mobile applications can be ten fold over the span of as little as one year.

Real-Time: Conducting business off-site and interfacing directly with business process systems opens the opportunity for nearly any business process to be done in real-time. Even when there are limitations with connectivity, enterprise applications can be developed to intelligently sync data via hands-off, automatic processes at the first available connectivity. The end result is that interactions with customers, vendors or employees are done as quickly as possible, reducing the amount of disruption or lag associated with relying on in-office desktop processing.

For our mobile application development, we specialize in iOS (iPhone and iPad) and Android platforms allowing us to leverage nearly all mobile devices used by enterprises and consumers.

A successful BPA initiative is highly dependent on factors other than the development, such as requirements discovery, business analytics and being able to handle the myriad of technical issues related to implementation and deployment. A core component of our service and Method is to actively engage with our clients in discussing goals of the initiative and analyzing business process and existing legacy systems, so we can craft a comprehensive plan that addresses all known challenges. Each member of our core team of account executives and developers has 15+ years business analytics and IT experience to draw from in support of implementing a solution.

As a full service vendor, Rogue Method also provides the business analytics and ancillary IT services to meet project demands. Our comprehensive set of services enables us to work with any type of project or industry. Over the years, we've demonstrated proven success on mission-critical initiatives for our clients, including Fortune 500 manufacturers in consumer electronics.

Our Projects. To illustrate the breadth and scope of projects we've worked on, we've provided the following summaries of recent projects. Due to the confidential and proprietary nature of our projects, we're unable to identify specific companies, provide links or detailed screenshots of the applications we've developed.

Sample Project Summaries:
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CRM Systems

CRM systems: Rogue Method has developed several custom Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions for Fortune 500 manufactures in the Consumer Electronics industry to support dealer management. The applications were highly integrated and tailored to meet business process and workflow requirements. These CRM tools were selective and targeted in terms of the data being tracked to ensure the UI and workflow remained consistent and aligned with the existing business process. At the same time, the database schema was developed with an eye to the future to ensure the applications were flexible enough to add modular components as the scope of the applications grew. This approach combined with filtered views based on roles resulted in streamlined, efficient applications that resulted in fast adoption curves and scaled as new departments and users came online.

Demand Forecasting Applications

Demand Forecasting Applications: For a Fortune 100 manufacturer, we developed a demand-side forecasting application used by the sales team as an integral part of their CPFR (Collaborative Planning, Forecast and Replenishment) process. This complex application rendered a dynamic "Excel" grid of data containing over 100+ dealers and 500+ SKU combinations. The application automatically processed data feeds from numerous sources and re-calculated data based on complex back-end business logic. This application was one of the key tools in achieving management's goal of improving product commitment accuracy with dealers at a time when the company was restructuring and faced with doing more with fewer resources.

Instant Rebate Processing Systems

Instant Rebate Processing Systems: For a Fortune 100 manufacturer, we developed a BPA system to automate their processing of Instant Rebate programs, allowing them to eliminate a third-party vendor that was previously providing this service. This application was an end-to-end solution for processing instant rebates and included tools to setup programs, evaluate program financial scenarios, analyze profitability, generate all documentation, notify internal/external users, internal review mechanisms and accounting integration with SAP. This tool had considerable internal value by reducing dealer chargebacks and administration time by automating a manual process. The application also had considerable external value by helping the manufacturer differentiate themselves and garnering dealer attention in areas other than just price point.

Marketing Asset Portals

Marketing Asset Portals: Rogue Method has developed several digital asset management tools focused on distribution of marketing materials. These tools provided dealers with a centralized location and seamless process to obtain materials and critical information needed to support their retail operations and marketing activities. The portals were customized to match brand guidelines and included features such as integration with their ERP system for master data and localization of content for multi-language support.

Order Entry Systems

Order Entry Systems: Rogue Method has developed custom B2C and B2B order entry systems that integrated with e-commerce and ERP platforms. These systems were fully integrated in our client's main sites and included advanced features, such as: real-time dealer cost calculations, ability to generate dynamic PDF price sheets, ability to split corporate level orders into location level shipments, order and shipment status.

Retail Store Servicer Systems

Retail Store Servicer Systems: For a Fortune 100 manufacturer, we developed a BPA system to support employees who visited stores to ensure products, accessories and advertising materials were present and displayed properly. The application's main features included: a tool for administrators to setup custom call reports to be filled out after visits, a forum-like communication tool for disseminating critical information, a calendar tool for scheduling visits and numerous reports used by management to monitor issues on the retail floor.

In-Store Mobile Upsell App

In-Store Mobile Upsell App: To support a Fortune 100 company, we developed a mobile application that can be used by salespeople in their stores to educate them about product selling points, upsell features between product models, and to provide product images and information that enable them to offer better support to their customers. The end result was dramatically improved knowledge and excitement of the company's product offerings on the sales floor, which lead to increased sales.

Our Method. Our Method reflects the lessons learned over years of working on complex, mission-critical projects for Fortune 500 companies. Our goal with every project is to ensure that we deliver solutions that meet the project vision, cost and time to implement requirements and provide value and benefit to our clients.
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Vision

Vision: Before diving into specific project requirements, understanding our client's business and how the project dovetails with the vision and brand is a critical first step. When this phase is not done properly, the short-term business requirements driving the project do not align with long-term goals of the business, resulting in a successfully launched project that is ultimately not a success for the enterprise. Knowing where the business is now and where it plans to be in 5 years is vital to the project's success — and more importantly, the overall success of our client's business.

Discovery

Discovery: Our discovery focuses on determining the root issues and challenges underlying the project's business requirements and goals. Often, these root issues can be hidden, reside in completely non-obvious areas or related to implementing process change that is secondary to the primary project. This can result in a project team believing they have addressed all known issues, only to discover well into the project development that fundamental issues remain unresolved. Whether it is business process, technical issues, compliance, regulatory or administrative challenges, through our discovery process, we facilitate the resolution of all issues to achieve real project success.

Requirements

Requirements: Gathering requirements is part science, part detective work. To effectively gather the complete set of project requirements, the project team must know the users, departments, decision-makers and the business processes involved. From these individual elements, we create use-cases and scenarios to ensure that we know how the project will be utilized in the real world. Once all these come together, our role is to facilitate the dialog between all parties, answer questions and provide business analytic guidance and development options. Only then can we ensure that we have addressed all the right issues so that we can craft the right solution.

Solution

Solution: When the Vision, Discovery and the Requirements come together we have what we need to craft a solution for the project. Because determination of a final solution is ultimately a collaborative process, we create workflow diagrams, wireframes and mock-ups of the GUI and other support materials that we share with our clients to visualize the complete solution. Especially on large projects involving multiple divisions, departments, users and multiple complex business processes, these deliverables are critical in ensuring that all requirements have been met and that the solution is intuitive and integrates with our client's business process and workflow.

Implementation

Implementation: This is our realm — our domain…. where days, weeks or months of actual development takes place. This is "heads-down, headphones on" highly focused time where we tackle implementation challenges with a lot of technical creativity and a bit of obsession over solving all issues. If the collective project teams followed our Method, did their homework and put in the effort, we're simply actualizing the project that's in the various documents that are part of Vision, Discovery and Requirements. Our development follows a combination of the Spiral and Waterfall models and we adhere to development best practices to ensure the source code and database schema result in an application that is maintainable, scalable and performs efficiently.

QA: Most of our projects are mission-critical to our clients and often have a financial component to them that further escalates the importance of ensuring the systems being put in production work as designed and are accurate. Our QA process is normally a 3 stage process. Stage One is our internal development QA. Throughout the development process, our developers practice test-driven coding techniques to make sure that our applications continue to function under all known conditions. Stage Two involves pushing the code to a development server where our business analysts and account executives test the application to ensure that it functions accurately and as designed. During this stage, we put on our "client hats" and reference various support materials generated as part of the Requirements phase to ensure we've met all project requirements. The use-case and scenarios are the foundation for this Stage Two of QA. After all known bugs and issues are resolved by developers, Stage Three involves migrating the application on to a Staging environment for final client end-user testing. We repeat the feedback and issue/bug resolution process until all issues are resolved and we get a green light to push the application into production.

Project Reviews

Project Reviews: Due to the complexity and challenges related to implementation, coordination and integration of large projects, most of our projects run over several years and involve several phases. With each successful sub-project we get an opportunity to do a project review and discuss what worked and what could be improved for the next phase of work. Often the early the phases of work are the most challenging as we get to know our respective project teams, departments and end-users. And frankly, it takes time for new clients to develop the kind of trust in our consulting and technical skills to make projects "effortless". But we enjoy building client trust as mush as any other part of our business. We truly strive to have our clients view us as partners who will be a part of their growth for years to come.

Our Team.

Rogue Method is a team of skilled professionals with the experience, skills and method to deliver software solutions for your enterprise and mission critical initiatives. We are focused on understanding our clients and the unique challenges of their business, so we can help envision and craft solutions. We welcome the opportunity to become your partner vendor and to help implement BPA and Mobile Application initiatives, so you can achieve your enterprise goals.

Chris Ostmo

Chris is the co-founder and Lead Technologist of Rogue Method, Inc. Chris began programming data-driven, web-based applications in 1995 — before any database systems were available for such applications, so he had to write his own. Chris has been involved in the design and architecture of server systems and networks for the Internet and has been the chief Unix and Linux system architect and administrator, lead programmer and Chief Technologist for multiple companies since 1995. His expertise includes Sun Solaris, BSD Unix (BSDi, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and Darwin) as well as many enterprise and free Linux distributions. Chris wrote the first available Open Source web-based Shopping Cart and Database Administration tools available in PHP and has years of experience with writing web-based applications using Oracle and PostgreSQL databases and utilizing PHP and Java programming languages, as well as writing and maintaining enterprise-class database systems for web-based applications. Chris has also been responsible for many successful mobile application development initiatives for both consumers and enterprise on nearly every platform dating back to Palm OS.

Chris attended Southern Oregon University in Ashland, where he studied Computer Sciences and Communications.

Teek Sharma

Teek is the co-founder and President of Rogue Method, Inc. and has lead several small businesses and held senior management positions with software development and telecom companies. In addition to management and operations experience, his background includes being a technology analyst for a San Francisco Bay Area investment bank where he helped structure and source over $100 million in corporate finance transactions for small public technology companies. After a few years as a technology analyst, he decided that he wanted a more direct and hands-on career in technology and has not looked back since.

Teek graduated from Pennsylvania State University in 1988 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy after attending Temple University in Philadelphia. From 1999 through 2001, Teek was on the CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) track prior to leaving the financial services industry.

Jesse Repp

Specializing in Professional Services, Jesse combines years of technical expertise with problem solving skills to ensure the successful delivery of a scalable solution that clients require. Prior to joining Rogue Method, Jesse was responsible for client relations, project management and implementation as the Director of Professional Services at Pharmacy Computer Services supporting a highly customizable pharmacy management system with interfaces to dispensing robots, registration systems, e-prescribing systems, financial applications and regulators. Before relocating to the Rogue Valley, Jesse spent time at WorkforceLogic working closely with BNP Paribas, eBay, Clorox, Google and RHDonnelley implementing workforce management solutions. In addition to stints at tech start-ups, Jesse cofounded Ondonte Dental Staffing, one of the San Francisco Bay Area's leading staffing agencies, specializing in dental staffing and recruiting. From conception to daily operation, Jesse had a part in market strategy, marketing and business systems and processes for future franchise potential. Jesse’s recruiting and staffing experience helped build an elite service based on customer service and talented referrals.

Jesse graduated from St. Mary's College of California with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Management in 2001.

Bob Scott

Bob is a lead software engineer for Rogue Method, Inc. and serves on its Board of Directors. He has been involved in software development for over thirty years, including managing large teams of design engineers in Silicon Valley. In addition to providing contract programming for other local companies, Mr. Scott serves as Technical Director for Grail Investments, LLC, and analyzes companies for investment purposes for Strategic Financial Management, specializing in the mining and precious metals sectors, and in special situations, in technology. Mr. Scott has also been heavily involved in numerous startup ventures over the past twenty years, to include planting three churches. He is currently a significant minority owner of and provides regular guidance for several private companies that are commercializing innovative technologies and serves as a director of Alaska Mines Corporation. Following seminary, Mr. Scott planted and pastored a church in Pleasanton, California before moving to Medford, Oregon in late 1998.

Bob graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science degree in Management Science in 1977, a Master of Science in Industrial Administration from Carnegie Mellon University in 1978, and a Master of Divinity summa cum laude from Covenant Theological Seminary in 1990. He served as a Captain in the US Army, as a Technical Manager for flight simulator companies in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Paris, France; Dallas, Texas; and Sunnyvale, California.

info@roguemethodinc.com