Providing optimal technological solutions to support today’s fast paced digital revolution and the IoT: Pounce Consulting

The Silicon Review

"Since our beginning, we have strived to be a leader and key partner to our customers by offering compelling solutions with our integrated business model focusing on the customer’s needs and expectations.”

Colin Powell had once said, “A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.” Indeed, it is the hard work and talent which speaks out when you have utter determination of achieving the desired goal. Roger Viera is one such personality who harbored a vision for ‘Pounce Consulting Inc.’, the innovative high technology company that he acquired in 2005.

Headquartered at San Diego, California, USA, Pounce was founded in 2001 by three California entrepreneurs as a technology staffing, consulting, and headhunting firm. When Roger joined the company, he noticed that several of Pounce’s talented California-based engineers were Mexican. He therefore advocated for and oversaw a move from an offshore model in South Asia to a near shore model in Guadalajara, “Mexico’s Silicon Valley,” to compete more directly with US firms. After three years with the firm, it became clear to Roger that he cherished a vision for Pounce Consulting that outstripped the more modest ambitions of the company’s founders. In 2005, he bought the company in a management buyout. As a Mexican technology firm, Pounce Consulting was born as a software company. Along the years, it decided to invest in new technologies, processes and talent to make it a global company. The company created new products in Software and Hardware for global clients. On the whole, it developed, transformed, and integrated projects and platforms. Since its beginnings, Pounce has been looking forward to grow and evolve constantly in order to be the main partner of its clients through the integrated business model that it developed and implemented with success.

Pounce Embedded Systems helps clients to design, prototype, and test products that combine hardware and software, such as electronic kiosks and medical infusion pumps. Pounce Electronics manufactures and assembles products designed by Embedded Systems or brought to Pounce by the client. Started on embedded systems and manufacturing, the revamped company built a manufacturing facility and in August 2008 closed its first sale with Pisa Pharmaceutical to design and manufacture embedded systems for medical equipments.

The company’s offering of an integral cycle of services that allows transforming ideas into finished products through custom solutions, is what makes it different for others in the domain. Today, the company has many patterns, which includes patterns on medical devices, electronic devices, wearable’ and many more. Pounce has three divisions: the first one is the ‘Software Division’ which is the core division. The second division is ‘Design Hardware & Manufacture’ products and the third one is ‘Fabri-cation & Manufacture’ plans.

In their endeavor to deliver the best to their prospective clients, the company offers varied services to its clients such as Firmware, Layout, Industrial Design, Research, Prototype, Electronic Design, Certifica-tion, Project Management, Software, Quality & Testing, ERP Services and Mobile App.

Strategic Alliance with ‘MyGnar’ to launch a Flagship Product
Under the headship of Roger, the company partnered with MyGnar Inc. to design and produce an innovative solution for GoPro and DSLR camera owners. The GNARBOX, is a pocket-sized device that brings unprecedented ease to editing and sharing high-definition media files using just a mobile application. The partnership was a testament to Pounce’s excellence in both design consulting and embedded systems manufacturing. Roger, in a statement said, “GNARBOX is an exciting opportunity for Pounce Consulting and manufacturing. We have spent years building a portfolio of large and successful clients that utilize a multitude of our services. Now, we have another young company to add to our portfolio of rising stars. The product MyGnar has been built along with their excellent technology and marketing teams that gives us great confidence that this partnership will be a fruitful one for years to come.” Tim Feess, the CEO ofMyGnar said “This is a very exciting day for GNARBOX. We have found a strong partner who has top-notch capabilities in embedded systems design and manufacturing. Quality is paramount to our team, and we know that Pounce will not only deliver an excellent product, but
also help us scale our business.”

Winning the trust of Clients
Under the leadership of Roger, the company has grown leaps and bounds and has been successful in gaining the trust of clients. Clients are offered with an integral cycle of support that transforms ideas into finished products by providing custom solutions in embedded design, electronics manufacturing, IT and staffing services. Pounce Consulting’s prestigious clientele includes companies such as Metlife, IBM, HP, SUZUKI, Nike, AECOM, KOSTAL, 3M, PISA, JABIL, FUJITSU, AMD, Disney, Continental, TableSafe, Quadlogic, etc.

Some of many successful projects

Fujitsu: The semiconductors division of the Japanese giant Fujitsu entrusted Pounce with the design and manufacturing of a useful and adaptable platform to satisfy the diverse needs of its clients. The graphical interface development platform for embedded systems complies with strict quality standards and is highly functional as a basis for any type of system displays, except computers. Thanks to its high level of compatibility, this design helps to reduce costs in technological assembly processes performed by Fujitsu’s clients. The high level of confidence that the Japanese company has placed in Pounce has earned the latter the license to sell this platform directly. As time goes by, the number of strategic alliances between Pounce and companies specialized in semiconductors keep growing, as Pounce has consolidated itself as a technological design center that develops built to suit solutions. It is highly common for our allies to recommend us directly with their clients.

Future Electronics: Pounce created a low-cost and flexible platform, which enables accelerated application development for many markets. The reference design integrates wireless communication, analog technology and RGB LED lighting that allows generating a wide range of colors.

The platform consists of a handheld remote control and a group of lighting elements. The first one remotely changes intensity and color range of the lamps.

The design consists of:

A transceiver board with a MC1321X Freescale chip.
A low-power and low-cost controller board, including MPR0Ex Freescale capacitive proximity sensors with board electrodes integrated as buttons.
Remote lighting board including four high-brightness LEDs.

The system can control one or several light boards at a time. Lights can also be controlled by computer, using a graphical user interface and a USB transceiver board. In this mode, custom color from a pallet can be selected. This reference design allows customers to reduce the time-to-market by reusing software and hardware parts of a proven solution into their own designs.

AMD: This design is a low-cost platform intended for embedded innovators who can create and develop new hardware and software products around AMD Fusion Family APUs (Accelerated Processing Units). Pounce is a trusted technology partner in America for AMD, with the know how to design, integrate and develop high-performance solutions, therefore, the company earned the design housing certificate, issued by the global firm. The board design included high-level layout activities and integrated, among other components, a DDR3 memory and an AMD Fusion APU with more than 900 pins interconnected through a 10 layers printed circuit board (PCB).

Nike: Nike de Mexico requested Pounce to work in a process re-engineering to optimize the catalog generation process for customers publishing in each season. A process reengineering was implemented in order to create a new cataloging system: automated, error-free and on-time, with standardized information for all three divisions (Footwear, Apparel and Equipment) that can be accessed from a single source of information. Previously, different departments, business units and product managers used to participate in the construction and validation of activities. The company estimated the stress value of this process in around 250 hours. By being validated manually, both in terms of information sources as well as in mapping, such process was susceptible to human error and often caused format and content errors in the final product. The added value of Pounce’s solution resulted in a reduction of effort time down to 32 hours, due to an error-free process that automated the creation of different versions of the catalog, cutting down the amount of manual capture and re-work, and eliminating flaws inherent to the manual process previously in place. Moreover, this solution has allowed the company to reduce the completion time of the different versions of the product catalog by at least one week.

Awards & Recognitions Galore!

Pounce Consulting’s design team won the first place from a! Diseño magazine in their international design awards annual competition held in 2015.
Pounce won the Gold prize in the 28th International Arch of Europe Convention Frankfurt 2015 for Global Quality and Innovation.

Meet the man behind Pounce’s success

Carrying 15 years of experience and expertise in enterprise IT management and business process reengi-neering of global companies, Roger Viera brings leadership and vision to Pounce Consulting Inc. provid-ing cohesive guidance and strategy in delivering high-value technical solutions and consulting services in the United States, Mexico and Latin America. Roger also possesses the knowledge and experience to create a new kind of IT consulting, focusing on client’s needs as they implement IT strategies in today’s “Global Economy Market”.

Prior to Pounce Consulting, Viera served as President of Caaspre Technologies, a near shore development software company. In this role, Roger was responsible for all the aspects of the company activities including sales, marketing, human resources, and operations. Prior to joining Caaspre, he was the Director of Technical Consulting Services for SAGE-ABRA. In this role,he was responsible for the development, deployment, and customer support for SAGE-ABRA’s web based software (Imperativ). He also created the consulting group that implemented SAGE-ABRA Imperativ. Before directing the SAGE-ABRA Imperativ group, he served as IT Vice President of the Tropitone Furniture Company. As the head of IT, he implemented “Demand Flow Technology” for the manufacturing operations and was responsible for the implementation of SAP for their Financial and Manufacturing Operations, across the USA, Mexico and China. He has also developed “logistic” software to ensure the tracking and routing of all client shipments between distribution centers.

An orator, Roger has spoken extensively to corporate leaders in Mexico and Latin America at international business events on a variety of IT topics. An alumnus of University of California State Fullerton, Roger has completed the Management Executive Program from IPADE Business School. He currently serves as Board Member for the Mexican Software Association (AMITTI).