It was a challenging journey,” exclaims Bashir Bseirani, looking back at the meandering journey he and Giancarlo Reyes, his business partner, had to traverse to visualize their idea, aptly named as Avertra. Starting off as an initiative to improve firms’ workflow and business analytics through intuitive products, today it has grown from a firm run by a two member squad to having multiple offices and customers in the U.S., Middle East and South-East Asia.

As the name implies, Avertra is about bringing the ‘excellence’ to utilities providers through ‘transparency’. “We are very different from most of the people in the industry,” says Bashir. “We are a self-funded and self-created firm that has now reached a point where we have people as high as Vice Presidents from organizations such as Capgemini and IBM leave and join us,” he explains.

This reputation of Avertra is not built in a day. “We are marathon runners, not sprinters, and we have a long term vision,” affirms Bseirani. The company is dedicated, not just towards the customers but also with regards to their employees. This goes hand in hand with accuracy. “We are committed to constantly implement solutions which provide accurate real time information to our clients,” asserts Bseirani.

Avertra’s work speaks for itself. The company’s customer base has grown sevenfold over the last few years and includes names such as Oklahoma Gas & Electric, Peoples Natural Gas, Fairfax Water, Peoples TWP and Oklahoma Water. The increase in the number of customers can be accredited to great references by their existing clients. “When utilities leaders and decision makers see the kind of solutions that we offer, they realize that we are different from the larger brands and organizations,” reveals Bseirani.

Redefining the term “Out of the Box”

Avertra thrives on chaotic situations where customers need quick creative solutions to be able to meet regulatory needs and business demands. “Our solutions help the utilities to be in control,” says Bseirani. It helps customers to have control over the ways they engage with utilities, while still being in control of the amount of information being revealed to the outside world.

The company specializes in providing subject matter expertise across all areas of SAP development and deployment to energy and utilities clients across the U.S. “We work diligently to deliver the highest quality consulting services that meet client’s unique needs, using a proactive approach to understand their requirements and long term objectives,” affirms Bseirani. Avertra has coupled this with the latest best practices to identify the talent that can meet the demands of the engagement, while adhering to the highest level of professional standards.

Avertra’s team creates a solid foundation for client’s SAP system and configures it in a way to optimize the system performance and to incorporate future business needs. The company’s SAP implementations cover all ERP and ISU modules and the company’s consultants are experts in complete lifecycle implementations—from project scoping and blueprinting to post implementation support and performance optimization. Avertra’s hybrid onshore/offshore SAP Application Management and Support (AMS) services model provides complete coverage for processes relating to knowledge transfer and acquisition, system enhancements, and quality management. It also promotes ongoing system optimizations while insuring 24/7 system monitoring and reducing overall operational costs of our customers. “Our goal is not to support clients forever, but to help insure that their staff can take over support once we leave,” clarifies Reyes.

Avertra’s SAP implementation and support services to large and mid-sized organizations insure increased visibility into operations, increased process integrity and heightened competitive agility in a dynamic regulatory and customer landscape. Further, Avertra’s SAP audit service experts/team focuses on enhancing client’s organizational gains from their SAP implementation by charting out small incremental steps, to provide clarity into what was really delivered as part of their SAP initiative. The audits include alignment review and enabling of support offered by the SAP implementation to core business KPIs, system validation review from a risk mitigation perspective and review of current internal competencies.

For instance, consider the case of a utilities company that was unhappy with their existing BI vendor. The knowledge and services provided by the vendor was unsatisfactory, and the client turned to Avertra. Avertra carried out a thorough evaluation—a pre-audit. “We took over the BI area for the customer, working with one onsite representative/BI lead and then designed an offshore team specific to the need,” explains Bseirani. Within the first nine months of this association, Avertra synchronized all direct modifications that were done in production back into development as well as QA, and performed a full blown assessment of the transportation documents that were left hanging by the previous vendor. Avertra’s team also remodeled sales and statistics, as well as the entire BW landscape to easily adopt any new mergers and acquisitions. “The client realized benefits of every single new purchase because they didn’t have to rebuild all their reports,” reveals Bseirani.