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Tensoft’s Philosophy on Product Development

Amit Garg is Tensoft’s Director of Software Development and Product Management. Amit was an early member of Tensoft’s team, and is responsible today for managing the software development lifecycle of several products developed and supported by Tensoft. He was one of the technical architects of Tensoft Fabless Semiconductor Management (FSM), and oversees the Tensoft software development team based near New Delhi, India. He has over 10 years experience in software system design, development and implementation. Alejandro Barajas, Tensoft Marketing Associate, recently interviewed Amit, who shared some insight into his approach to software development.

BARAJAS: Could you provide some background on Tensoft’s philosophy for product development?
GARG: At Tensoft, we think of products as a set of complex algorithms which we convert into easy–to–use end products for our customers. Tensoft works very closely with its customer base throughout the product development cycle to achieve this. The customers are engaged from the concept stage of the product developments, and this helps us stay close to the customer needs, and to deliver an excellent user experience.

BARAJAS: Can you describe who’s involved in the development process and what’s done where?
GARG: Tensoft’s product team is based in US and India. The US team provides the domain knowledge for the product. It also interacts with our customers to understand their needs. The team in India provides the technical skills for the product development and is primarily responsible for technical design, development and support of the product.

BARAJAS: Can you talk a little about how you built your team?
GARG: While building a team, we concentrate on two things. The technical skills are important but it’s very critical for us to pick people who fit well into our company culture. When we started building our team, I picked people I knew – people I had worked with – to make sure I got the right people onboard. We pretty much follow the same practice today. We hire people only through references of our existing team.

BARAJAS: Tell me about some of the challenges of maintaining a stable team in India?
GARG: In India attrition rate is pretty high in the IT sector right now. That has always been the nature of this industry, of course. However, we have been very fortunate to maintain a stable team over the years. We manage that by taking good care of our employees, providing them a challenging career, an equal opportunity to grow and a great environment to work in.

BARAJAS: What are some of the strengths of Tensoft’s model?
GARG: Having a product development and support center in India has proved to be of a great value to us. It gives us the opportunity to tap into the pool of the best engineers in the world.

Apart from that it allows us to provide efficient support system to our worldwide customers who operate in different time zones. Between our team in US and India, we are available for our customers at least 18 hours a day. This allows us to promptly take care of our customer needs. It also helps us shorten our product development cycle. When the team in India ends its day, the team in US continues with its part of responsibilities and vice versa. This surely makes the product development move much faster than a typical 8 hour a day work environment.

BARAJAS: How do you foresee Tensoft’s product development in the near future? Will anything change in how you manage your development team?
GARG: Tensoft has been expanding its product offerings. Last year we introduced Tensoft Multi–National Consolidation (MNC). This year we launched a new product, Tensoft Revenue and Deferral Management (RDM). We also have some Business Intelligence related products in the pipeline.

We are excited about the new products, but at the same time, we are focused on continuing to scale our development and support model. We are constantly reviewing current practices and implementing various applications in–house to ensure that we will keep providing great service to our customers.

BARAJAS:Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us, Amit!

For further information, please contact Caprice Murray, Tensoft Director of Business Development, at 888–450–4030 x406 or at caprice@tensoft.com