Holistic Approach to Success
In this environment of uncertainties and hardships, what sustains a business is the focus it has to maintain committedly:
How do enterprises become successful? In simple words, by creating products and services around the prospective customers’ needs by using the right tools. In doing so, one must understand policies, requirements and the users’ expectations, besides acquiring the knowhow to build the product or create the service. Successful entrepreneurs list the steps that are required to be taken for the business to flourish as focus on customer service, having an effective marketing effort, having good online presence, bringing down business costs, finding and keeping right employees, updating business plan periodically and always staying balanced.
CHANGES IN 5 AREAS
Balaji Vishwanathan of Expleo maintains that the changes both in medium and long term have been primarily in 5 areas: (i) Operating model – hybrid model of permanent vs partners, how to work with competitors as partners;
(ii) Resourcing model – dedicated vs demand based, external help on niche skills, engage with consultants on a near-gig model;
(iii) Up-skill and re-skill methodologies, including cloud based hands-on experiential learning;
(iv) Evaluating, understanding and solutioning techniques in the current remote working scenario; and
(v) Focus on constant engagement, communication with the team(s), clients and partner(s) without fail.
Anand Awasthi of Avhan Technologies says the company has moved to ‘work from anywhere’, become far more process driven and all its processes have been progressively aligned to achieve real-time process delivery. “After having spent months to achieve the shift, we have realized the challenges that our customers must be facing (their teams don’t even know the extent of ‘new’ possibilities that we know. Also, we share our experiences with any organization/ chamber/institution for promoting entrepreneurship in any way. Then, we use social media and participate in tech startup gatherings and discussion groups in fairly open discussions,” he says.
TALENT IS SUPREME
Govind Ramamurthy of eScan gives precedence to talent. Says he: “While in the years that have gone by, we have always heard candidates for what they have to offer with the kind of talent that they possess and then presented them with opportunities that will hone their skills and enable them to achieve their dreams. But in the current era, we first understand what the priority of a talented candidate is and then support him with a balanced work-life environment that aids not only his professional but personal growth as well.”
Similarly, when planning to sign a potential customer, the company showcases what work it has done and all the accolades that it has received for it. “At the same time, we also do tell them that we are not infallible and we have learnt from our mistakes and grown as an organization.
This ensures that we are honest with our success and failures, creating a bond with them while establishing clear communications,” he adds.
He adds that the company works with a wide-range of institutions across the country to develop partners, encourage entrepreneurs and train CIOs, CTOs and CSOs. Working with the likes of CII, Assocham, CDMA, etc, and also with the likes of entrepreneurship cells of top-ranking colleges in India, it tries to deliver experience and value to budding innovators.
STAFF COOPERATION
Vijender Yadav of Accops says with its years of expertise and knowledge in the field of end-user computing virtualization and ZTNA-based remote access, the company has built itself into a progressive one where everyone works in sync and works as an essential cog in running the wheels of the organization.
He says Accops is a 100% channelfocused company, with channel partners playing a critical role in GTM strategies. It has over 150 resellers in India, Japan and Middle east. Other partners exist in South America, Central Europe. In the US, it has signed up with an OEM partner as well as few resellers to start building sales there. It is also collaborating with several others to strengthen its sales capabilities and provide enterprises with multiple options and take benefit of partner sales networks.
“We use all major digital and social media platforms to engage with customers organically. We roll out EDMs, newsletters, press releases, etc, regularly to keep existing and potential customers updated on new products and solutions. With Thought Leadership marketing, we try to make customers aware of new trends, innovations, and best practices. We also sponsor virtual events and technology conferences to reach out to the relevant audience,” he adds.
Gayatri Balaji of Nanobi lists what the company has followed in various functional domains:
(i) Keep new recruits on a trial period where both them and us can learn about each other and walk away during that period if we find the fitment is incorrect.
(ii) Tightly manage the sales pipeline and qualify leads/prospects carefully using 3 attributes a) a real, immediate and compelling need b) a budget to support that need c) access to and the concurrence of key decision makers. 3) Keep c us t o mers e ngaged a nd constantly innovate for them - new ideas, new solutions, new processes. 4) Allow the team to work on multiple different projects and find the sweet spot that they want to build expertise in. 5) Be the best in what we do - wrap the technology with domain expertise and customer relationship management skills/programs.
COUNTERING COVID IMPACT
Anuj Gupta of Hitachi Systems Micro Clinic specifically about steps initiated to overcome the impact of the pandemic. “We have taken measures to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic and other risks. We have created a governance mechanism to evaluate the new business opportunities with a cross-functional risk exposure taking suggestions from HR, finance and business teams. To ensure that we take informed business decisions, we have started engaging with credit rating agencies for evaluating liquidity position for extended credit on new projects. We have established new metrics for effective measurement of employee productivity. For motivating our employees, we mapped the learning and development plan after identifying the gaps in the skillsets. As a Japanese company, we strongly believe in Kaizen, which has been implemented through simplified business engagement model and shared services in all departments.”
SELECTING TALENT DIFFICULT
Vinod Govindan of Oceans stresses that selecting and retaining talent is always a complex process. Identifying the right skills but yet having candidates who can adapt to new skills is one of the key challenges in hiring the right skill.
“One of the means to get candidates attracted to us is to let them know the challenges they will be addressing and have them engage in some trial examples of the problems they will be involved in solving. They can then give their ideas and thoughts on how they will address them. With this hands-on approach to hiring, we give them a feel of what they will experience and we get a feel of how they will perform in the environment,” he says.
And in the company rewards are always based on the following factors: a. achieving goals b. achieving them as a team or singularly c. achieving them in stipulated time, and d. examining how the most visible person
shares the rewards with contributors
Vinod Govindan also adds: “For attracting customers, our focus is not on sales but solutioning. The teams are encouraged to solve customers’ problem. This is easier said than done because sometimes that could lead to your own solution (as it stands today) not fitting the customers’ needs, but in the long run that’s better. The trust you build will enable you to make the sales down the line. And it keeps the entire supply chain honest without undue pressure of meeting unreasonable commitments and deadlines and/ or putting excessive risk on the business operations.”
AN OPEN MIND
Ashwin Chawwla of Escrow Play says the company is open in its approaches, embraces diversity in employees and creates a collaborative workplace where talented people can flourish and grow. “We’re taking the Stripe approach of picking best talent from the absolutely best payment and banking companies,” he says.
The major qualitative improvements that Acute made, according to Chirag Patel, are:
Adapting to customer’s expectations swiftly and making strategic business decisions keeping in mind the effect of the pandemic on their IT budgets/ spending.
Observing employees’ challenges during pandemic and bringing in a professional trainer who can help them overcome these challenges. Creating Close Departmental Groups, allowing more interaction among the members of the group, which often stimulates further discussion and uncovers unanticipated issues and insights arising due to pandemic.
The company, says Patel, also took some proactive measures: “We ignored absenteeism due to covid, meaning there is no pay cut, assigned a dedicated HR/ Admin executive for employees’ healthcare claims, including costs associated with emergency covid room use, increase in compensation for staff, did online surveys to understand what is expected from HR teams and how WFH can be implemented with security and access of office systems quickly, encouraging existing customers to attend on-line web meetings to discuss their support issues and to explain to them the importance of cyber security during a pandemic and encouraging potential customers to attend on-line web meetings to discuss the impact of pandemic on their IT budgets and positioning our solutions accordingly with realistic implementation timelines.”
Ganesh Jivani of Matrix Telecom says the company has been questioning its assumptions and reassessing its strategies, structures, processes and skills to find more effective solutions to grow its business. “Of course, there is large difference between understanding something and executing it,” he concedes, and states: “Therefore, this is work in process.”
Pramod Sharda of Icewarp has few words: “You can’t make every customer happy, but if you are open and transparent and most importantly available, the customer appreciates it.”
Rohit Mathur of Exponentia says the company has applied our learnings by having a dedicated customer success team, which defines success differently for different stakeholders and ensures that all stakeholders see the success in their own way. The team also aligns internal teams to client stakeholders’ view of success.
SALES TEAM FACES DIFFICULTIES
Srikumar Kumar of Alpharithm stresses that as an IT services provider, the company’s people and process were already aligned to the remote method of working and delivering value to clients. However, the sales and marketing approach had to be improvised to demonstrate value to prospects over virtual meetings and workshops. While 70% of the delivery team was working remotely, 30% of them had to be based on client locations. “Appropriate measures were taken and the 30% workforce were guided to adapt to the policies and tools of the clients to avoid disruption in delivery timelines. Virtual meeting platforms have been made as the default tools for discussing company strategy, cashflow, operational issues, etc.
While these may be lessons learnt and measures initiated to counter particular issues at a given point of time, there are proven smart ways for any leader to ensure that the staff is motivated to get through tough times. Management experts list these briefly as: 1. transparent communication about a particular situation, 2. identifying the lessons to be learnt, 3. sharing one’s vision for the future, 4. acknowledging even smallest of the achievements and 5. seeking honest feedback.