Polestar Solutions & Services: Delivering the ‘intelligence’ in Business Intelligence

“We deliver reliable, scalable, robust solutions and services to our client with a quick turn-around time”

Polestar is an industry leader in the implementation of Business Intelligence (BI) and business automation solutions in Asia Pacific region. It has provided some of the best and most practical solutions for companies looking for data warehouses, data mining and business discovery. It has also been actively involved in application development for global companies and are now extending their reach all over the world.

BI market has been growing rapidly worldwide and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of about 8% in the next 5 years. The Asia Pacific region is one of the fastest growing markets in this sector. Even with this competitive scenario, Polestar has built a reputation with its consulting approach & holistic methodologies. It is making its presence felt not only in India but also in USA, Middle East & Europe.

“Enabling enterprises to achieve sustainable and scalable development through IT driven business transformation, that’s what we strive for”. – Ajay Goenka, Chetan Alsisaria and Amit Kumar, Directors of Polestar.

Technology enablement, not just technology implementation
What sets Polestar apart from the rest of the competition is it’s “strong domain expertise”.

Their mantra is to achieve technology enablement, not merely technology implementations. In all its projects, they take tremendous effort to understand the business, develop enablement models and involve key stakeholders at every stage of their agile implementations. This consultative methodology is what has positioned them as a market leader in this space.

Polestar’s unique Service offerings
Polestar’s industry strongholds have been in the manufacturing, ecommerce, consumer electronics, retail, healthcare, logistics and ITES spaces. Within these domains, they have developed software applications and BI solutions for Fortune 500 companies and startups alike. Their service offerings across various technology stacks include:

Qlikview & Qliksense
Polestar is a leading Value-added partner of Qlik (a NASDAQ listed global leader in BI space). Varun Garg an ex-Deloitte professional who leads the Qlik Practice in Polestar says, “Business Intelligence is a Journey where benefits come incrementally over a period of time. The thought-process of the stakeholders also evolves and accordingly the BI needs to adapt. Hence agility is the key. Polestar thrives on speed and agility while still maintaining exceptional quality”. Given Polestar’s exceptional cross-functional expertise along with the technology prowess, Qlik has nominated Polestar to be a member of the ‘Partner Advisory Council’ for Asia Pacific Region which has only 13 members. They are undeniably the best QlikSense implementation partners in India today.

Application Development

 .NET
Polestar’s services in .NET development include various versions and design patterns in ASP.Net: desktop-based applications using Win Forms, Console applications, WPF-based smart clients, etc. Mobile apps (including Xamarin), middleware application development and migration offerings.

Sharepoint
Be it creating a new SharePoint based application/ portal or maintenance and enhancement of an existing one, Polestar has the right resources, tools and processes to cater each of the scenarios. Apart from a strong technical team, they have a creative visualization team that enables them to create attractive and intuitive designs for their customers’ applications and websites.

Middleware/API
Polestar has created a specialized team of Custom Middleware developers who use technologies such as Node.js to create custom RESTful APIs that return the output in JSON/XML format. Any system, irrespective of the platform on which it has been developed, can call these APIs and communicate with the publishing system.

Mobile apps
Polestar extends its agile methodology to mobile applications. They develop mobile apps that can be swiftly demonstrated to stakeholders and rapidly refined in successive iterations.

Across each service offering lies the common thread of staying abreast with the latest in technology. Ankit Rana an ex-Deloitte & Satyam technocrat, who leads the Enterprise Application Development practice at Polestar says, “While the thing that differentiates Polestar is our deep understanding of business processes, we give equal importance to staying up-to-date in the technologies surrounding BI and application development. We were one of the early adopters of technologies such as AngularJS and Node.js much before they became languages of choice for enterprises looking for web solutions”

Polestar has seasoned consultants and technologists who are very good in architecting, designing and developing sophisticated enterprise wide solutions. They approach consulting with a sense of duty and responsibility.

Carrying Client-Friendly Approach
Because of Polestar’s client-centric approach, they are able to boast of a wide array of clients. Their domestic as well as international clients are serviced through their central team in India, enabling operating cost advantages that they can pass on to clients. However, what showcases their dexterity in managing a variety of clients most is how they deliver projects for Fortune 500 clients as well as SMEs with equal amounts of success.

With a leadership that possesses years of domain experience, a strong functional knowledge and a hunger to achieve excellence, client-centricity is simply a way of doing business for Polestar.

People at the crux of Polestar’s success

Dee Hock had once said “An organization, no matter how well designed, is only as good as the people who live and work in it”. Believing the same, Polestar attributes its success mainly to the people who make up the organisation. That’s why the company strives to create an employee-friendly atmosphere.

“We have been trying to, and have been largely successful at, making Polestar a happy place to work at by encouraging teamwork and bonding. We will be taking it up a notch higher this calendar year by providing ESOPs to our employees,” says Ajay Goenka, Director of Finance & HR at Polestar.

“We run various HR programs to provide opportunities for employee engagement.”

Thus, Polestar is a people-driven organisation. Whether it is a happy client or a happy employee, Polestar considers them both crucial to the growth of the company.

Chetan Alsisaria – Director

Chetan Alsisaria, co-founder and Director of Polestar who comes with a strong consulting background having worked previously with the likes of PwC, Deloitte and EY, states, “We do not target short term gains. Our vision is to pursue sustainable and scalable development. We do not believe in pushing any product. We try to understand the need of the customer and choose a product that works best for them, not only for current requirements but also for future developments. We achieve this with our robust processes and methodologies and by collaborating using the right project management tools.”

“With our deep functional & technical expertise coupled with our proprietary reusable assets, we ensure rapid development without compromising on quality”

Amit Kumar – Director
Amit Kumar, Polestar’s co-founder who has worked in more than 20 countries during his decade long association with Accenture, recounts when they were first engaged by one of the largest Airport Infrastructure & Operations Company. “They were already using QlikView as a BI tool to analyse the performance of their various functions,” he notes, “The client was having a great amount of trouble with their existing BI applications before Polestar got involved. The application was sub-optimal in-terms of performance. What’s more, reports were giving incorrect information! We examined the application carefully and found out that there wasn’t a problem with the product, but the way it was implemented. We developed an optimized data model that solved performance as well as data accuracy problems. We were able to do this because we understood the business and configured the application accordingly, instead of retrofitting the business process to the tool.”

“Our mission is to Partner with enterprises to provide World Class IT solutions at competitive rates”

Plans for the days ahead
While business booms for Polestar, the Directors are aware of the risks of complacency. “While we keep strengthening our existing capabilities,” says Chetan, “we also have a roadmap for the next three years”.
Polestar’s three-pronged roadmap envisions their goals for the next couple of years. Their focus areas in the future include:

• Industry domain: Build sales and garner accounts across the Financial Services sector by leveraging on the management team’s experience in this industry.
• Technology: Aggressively market CRM capabilities. Polestar is already forging partnerships with some of the product leaders in this space.
• Territory: Expand into the emerging markets.

Journey that began with a smile and determination to achieve heights… 

“Reasons why Polestar is an IT Partner of choice for many enterprises across the globe are: Agility, Quality & Transparency.”

Get in touch:www.polestarllp.com