Latest news with #Coalesce
Forbes
30-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
How Cultural Alignment Made Our First Acquisition A Seamless Success
Armon Petrossian, CEO & Co-Founder at data transformation company Coalesce. Earlier this year, Coalesce—the company I started with my co-founder Satish Jayanthi—made its first business acquisition. I found myself thinking about advice that a friend had once given me: in his experience, successful acquisitions always came down to cultural alignment. The companies that were aligned culturally tended to succeed, and those that weren't well aligned tended to fail. Simple as that. Finding The Right Fit Satish and I had considered several other candidates before we eventually acquired the data catalog company CastorDoc earlier this year. But nothing ever came of those prior meetings, mostly because we sensed a cultural mismatch right from the start. In contrast, when we eventually met the founders of CastorDoc, we immediately felt we'd found our ideal partners. An important part of our initial due diligence was investing the time to get to know the team well. I spoke with the founders daily, and we met in person several times. I was impressed by their ego-less spirit of collaboration and their eagerness to join forces to solve the big challenges we saw in the data space, and how we could help companies improve data transformation, data quality and data cataloging. I was as transparent as I could be, sharing my recent 360-degree performance review. I told them, 'Here's anonymous feedback from my team on what it's like working with me—my strengths as well as my areas for improvement.' I could tell they prioritized building strong relationships with their team as well, which was important to me as a leader who strives to have a personal connection with everyone at the company. The more I learned about the team, the more confident I became that we were aligned in our strategy, culture and vision. Honest And Open Communication Once both sides had agreed to the acquisition, it was important to proceed with clarity and empathy. I checked in with my new partners frequently to see how they were feeling about things. Were they still comfortable with me and Coalesce as the acquisition started to become a reality? A big part of managing an acquisition is selling the vision to both companies. I started my career in sales, and I think of this acquisition as the best and biggest deal I'd ever closed. But even though we initiated the deal, in the end it was a mutual decision, and it was important to acknowledge that it was a deal both sides worked on and closed together. The day we announced the acquisition to the CastorDoc team, I made sure to be onsite and meet with every team member. I introduced myself and Coalesce, asking them to give us a shot at working together. I answered their tough questions, such as how much capital we had, why we'd acquired them and what would happen to the founders. To build trust, I openly shared the acquisition horror story Satish and I had lived through at our previous company, which had inspired us to start a business together. I assured them we planned to do the opposite of everything the other company had done wrong. A big element of our company culture is transparency, so it was important we give full visibility to all employees as the two companies became one. We developed a 30-60-90 plan to outline our goals for the first three months and shared it with everyone for maximum visibility. The plan covered everything: system migrations, financial consolidations, marketing messaging, customer intros, PR announcements. We met weekly to track progress, which helped us hold each other accountable and keep moving forward. Protecting The Best Of Both Worlds Another challenge you must navigate when merging two companies is dealing with redundancies, whether that's systems, responsibilities or other elements of the business. We asked ourselves these hard questions right away and focused on doing everything we could to minimize disruption on both sides. This went relatively smoothly, in no small part thanks to the trust we had engendered by being so open and transparent with both CastorDoc's leadership and employees. We sought to minimize disruption for customers as well. The founders of CastorDoc and I made it a shared goal to quickly meet with as many people as possible. We wanted to provide assurances to CastorDoc customers that the data catalog solution they relied on would not only remain stable, but would now be greatly augmented by the Coalesce data transformation solution. I also wanted to get the CastorDoc product into the hands of as many Coalesce customers as possible without letting price be a barrier. In the early days of the acquisition, I wanted employees of both companies to feel the spirit of success as we took advantage of cross-sell and upsell opportunities. We sought to maintain momentum in our internal teams as well. I worried our sales team would immediately shift all their attention to selling the shiny, new product we'd just acquired instead of focusing on selling what they knew best. To counter this, we informed them they would still get paid for all these new deals but the CastorDoc founders and I would run the sales cycles ourselves. We'd eventually involve them in enablement and sales calls, but not right away. That turned out to be a really smart move—it helped everyone stay focused. Culture First, Always In the end, seeing how quickly the two companies came together proved that emphasizing cultural alignment first and foremost was the right move. It's been a smooth and seamless integration; in fact, it's somewhat remarkable how rapidly the two teams have merged into one cohesive company. For founders who are contemplating their first company acquisition, remember that culture isn't a soft metric or a secondary consideration—it's an essential ingredient to business success. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
The Irish Sun
24-07-2025
- Business
- The Irish Sun
Irish bank issue urgent warning as thousands at risk amid 150% rise in scam texts to ‘steal your money' this month
AN URGENT warning has been issued for thousands of Irish banking customers over a 'significant rise' in scam text messages. AIB, the spike in the number of customers receiving fraudulent text messages claiming to be from the bank this week. 3 Mary McHale wants bankers to be on alert over the increase in scam texts Credit: Shane O'Neill, Coalesce 3 The scam texts are designed to instil a sense of urgency to react Credit: AIB The messages have contributed to a 150 per cent increase in July compared to the amount of The scam texts can be delivered in AIB's genuine thread, but following the recent changes by Comreg, they are now predominantly coming from unregistered phone numbers. Mary McHale, Head of Financial Crime warned: "AIB is outlining a common fraud type that criminals are using to steal your money on foot of a large increase in text message scams we detected this week. "We want customers and non-customers to be alert, check the advice on our AIB security centre, and to take a moment to ask yourself, 'could this be a scam?'. READ MORE ON SCAMS "That's why you should wait a sec and double check, and never move your money to another account after receiving a call or text claiming to be us. Where customers are scammed, AIB deals sympathetically with them on a case-by-case basis. "We are continuously investing to enhance our fraud monitoring systems in response to new and existing fraud trends. "While other institutions don't offer around the clock support to keep money safe, our fraud helpline is open 24/7, seven days a week to support our customers when they need us. "We also work closely with industry stakeholders including telecommunications companies, the Banking and Payments Federation of Ireland (BPFI), and the Gardai to detect and report fraud trends, as it's only by communicating and coordinating across the whole of society that together we can be effective in combating these criminals." Most read in Money For more information on protecting yourself from fraud, customers can visit the security centre on The My mum's being scammed by an AI deepfake of 'Owen Wilson' who paid her £7 to 'prove' his identity - would you fall for it? Customers are tricked into thinking their accounts are compromised and asked to move their money to another financial institution for safekeeping. One example falsely claimed the transaction was from Foley's Plumbing Limited, a legitimate business. Foley's Plumbing has a notice on its website warning customers about the scam. The scam texts are designed to instil a sense of urgency to react, instructing people to call a provided Eventually, they'll be connected to an individual posing as a member of the fraud team, who falsely claims that the customer's AIB account has been compromised. They will be advised to transfer their HOW TO IDENTIFY AND AVOID SCAMS? Unfortunately, scam messages of any kind can be difficult to identify. It is important to be prudent by following these tips. Always be extra vigilant when you receive messages from unknown numbers, especially those that send links, ask for personal information, or require you to input any bank or card information. DO'S : Hang up immediately if a caller pressures you, claims urgent action is needed, or threatens negative consequences. If a call or text message claims to be from a bank, government agency or a company you know do not engage directly. Look up their official contact details to verify the number. Check messages for spelling errors or incorrect details. Block a number if they persistently call you or engage in suspicious behaviour. If you have friends or relatives abroad. Store their numbers in your phone (including the country prefix). If you are getting persistent scam calls from a number, contact your service provider, and request the number be blocked. DON'TS : NEVER provide any personal information, (bank details/PPS number/credit card details/name and address/passport numbers, passwords, etc.) Do not follow instructions from a recorded message. Be wary of receiving multiple calls or missed calls from the same unfamiliar number, especially if it is like your own number. Do not call back any number that you do not recognise or where no voicemail message was left. If you click on a link in a scam text, close the web page and message immediately. Do not download any unrecognised software or programs. The fraudster then provides the customer with what appears to be a 'new' account number, and customers are instructed to move their funds again to this account. Unfortunately, this so-called new account is controlled by scammers, resulting in victims losing all transferred funds. The scammers are highly skilled at tricking customers into believing they will stop fraudulent transactions from their accounts. They may even ask some questions, pretending to investigate how your account was compromised. Sometimes, they don't ask for security codes or login information to make the scam seem more legitimate. Customers are urged to remain vigilant and to verify any suspicious communications directly with the bank, the AIB's genuine contact details are listed on their official website. They are urged to never transfer money to any account after receiving a text or call purporting to be from AIB. 3 The AIB is urging customers to be aware of the scam texts Credit: Reuters
Hans India
29-05-2025
- Business
- Hans India
How Ashok Choppadandi's Data Architecture Transformed a $28B Financial Institution
In today's hyper-competitive financial landscape, data is more than a business asset—it's a strategic differentiator. Few embody this principle better than Ashok Choppadandi, whose architectural leadership at a $28 billion U.S. regional bank catalysed one of the most transformative digital journeys in modern banking. Before Choppadandi's involvement, the bank was grappling with deep-rooted inefficiencies: over 40 fragmented systems across business lines, inconsistent customer experiences, and compliance processes riddled with manual effort. 'The bank had accumulated a patchwork of legacy systems through years of growth and acquisitions,' Choppadandi recalls. 'This created blind spots that affected everything from customer service to regulatory compliance.' Recognising the urgent need for change, Choppadandi led the design and implementation of a cloud-native, intelligent data ecosystem that would redefine both the institution's internal operations and its external reputation. Built on Snowflake, AWS S3, and Kafka, with business-specific data marts and governed by Collibra and Coalesce low-code ELT tooling, the new architecture was a leap toward real-time, customer-centric banking. 'We designed the system with both current and future requirements in mind,' he explains. 'It had to meet regulatory frameworks like CECL, AML, and Basel III, but also empower agile decision-making and customer personalisation.' At the core of this transformation was Data Vault 2.0 modeling, enabling a flexible and scalable data warehouse. Kafka streaming pipelines delivered real-time insights across functions, while an ambitious data governance initiative enforced over 1,500 data quality rules and complete lineage mapping. But perhaps the most pioneering element was Choppadandi's application of Data Reliability Engineering (DRE). 'We treated data platforms as living environments,' he says. 'Our self-healing architecture could detect and resolve anomalies before they affected operations, driving resiliency and trust.' The results were nothing short of extraordinary. A unified Customer 360 platform enhanced relationship banking, regulatory reviews found zero compliance gaps, and platform resiliency soared. Real-time insights accelerated decisions across departments, and automated governance reduced both risk and cost. The transformation's impact extended well beyond the institution. 'The solutions we developed weren't just about one bank,' Choppadandi reflects. 'We were creating blueprints that address industry-wide challenges—trust, transparency, compliance, and customer focus.' Today, those architectural patterns are part of peer-reviewed publications and industry reference models, establishing Choppadandi as a thought leader in financial data innovation. His work didn't just change one bank's future—it helped define a new era for data-driven banking.
Business Post
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Post
Overall spend up 11% in April, as ‘Minecraft Movie' brings bumper month for cinemas, AIB report says
News Overall spend up 11% in April, as 'Minecraft Movie' brings bumper month for cinemas, AIB report says Megan O'Brien 08:10 The AIB Spend Trend report noted a 16 per cent rise in online spending in April. Photo: John Ohle/Coalesce
