Considering himself to be a conservative entrepreneur, Amrinder Arora, CEO & Co-founder of BizMerlin, believes that success ultimately is a combination of many things, but it is the simple desire to make positive changes, day in and day out, that can propel any organization to success.
Diligent Observation leading to HRM Solutions
While working in a string of consulting engagements, Amrinder observed that the resource management process was inherently suboptimal and very labor intensive. He realised the potential for creating something different here. After checking with many consulting services organizations, the idea of a core resource optimization product emerged. Based on this vision, Amrinder co-founded BizMerlin in 2013, to solve the problem of resource management, forecasting and timely acquisition in a much more effective manner, which to this day remains a significant competitive edge for the company.
“For most companies people are their most valuable asset and it is surprising, if not outright shocking, that the management of these resources is either considered to be a burden, or considered ‘solved’ using some variant of an address book. BizMerlin takes the opposite view to that, where all phases of a person’s hiring to retire cycle are given due consideration.”, explains Amrinder. For example, you can track how the person has evolved through various competencies, what trainings they took, what kind of goals they were able to undertake, what projects they worked on (and in what capacities), how the team structure evolved around them, what kind of feedback they received from their team, etc. This 360 degree view of a person is one of the main reasons the SMBs choose BizMerlin HRMS for their resource management needs.
BizMerlin’s solutions include Employee Onboarding, Goals and Performance Tracking, Hiring Automation, Skill Matrix, Resource Allocation Optimization and Retention Management which are a must have for all organizations.
A person of many talents
As an adjunct faculty member at George Washington University, Amrinder teaches graduate classes, mainly in Design and Analysis of Algorithms, and has received teaching excellence awards on multiple occasions. His textbook on Analysis and Design of Algorithms, discussing the various algorithm design techniques and their practical applications, is currently in its third edition.
Amrinder has a doctorate in computer science, and his doctoral thesis on scheduling algorithm was the genesis of his current work at BizMerlin. He has presented his work at multiple international conferences as well as received feedback through peer reviewed journals. His patent on data anomaly detection issued by the US patent and trademark office explains how seasonality can be used in data analysis and forecasting.
A Unique Approach towards the Existing Market
Amrinder credits the success of BizMerlin to the amazing team associated with the company, an honour he cherishes very much. Moreover, he recognizes the shifting landscape, where even a small company with ten people, has the need, the willingness, and the purchasing capability, to use the best people management software. Apart from that, the prevalent trend of cloud revolution has also, very exclusively, helped the company grow efficiently and steadily. “The entire software product is turn key and the process of onboarding a new customer involves no manual steps. This allows us to start a new customer at a fraction of the cost of traditional HR management systems. Power of the cloud using the industry standard AWS cloud gives us unmatched scalability for our larger customers, automated backups and zero wait startup for our new customers.”
“When we started, HR essentially meant paperwork. Instead, at BizMerlin, we redefined HR entirely on results. Using our research published in top journals and conferences, we are at the forefront of the research of what ultimately makes people and companies successful,” asserts Amrinder.
To be Prepared for the Entrepreneurial Journey
Before co-founding BizMerlin, Amrinder had served as Vice President of Product Development at one firm, VP of Solutions at another firm, and had also worked as a full time faculty member. Even though, those are all positions of great responsibility with multimillion dollar revenues and budgets, still they can only go so long in preparing one for the ultimate journey, the journey of an entrepreneur.
A Brief Tip to the Starters
Amrinder says, it is important for any entrepreneur to build on top of the company that you would like to eventually acquire you. Besides this, he suggests, a company should not venture out too broad, rather staying in the niche area will ultimately take you to your goals.
When asked if entrepreneurship is innate or if it can be learnt, Amrinder says, “There isn’t really anything that cannot be learnt. Rather, the question is – can you seed the desire to be an entrepreneur in anyone. To be an entrepreneur is to have the desire to work 24x7x365 for many years, to pursue your creative dream. Some people may simply not relish that idea, and may be more content with a steady pay check – nothing wrong in that choice either!”