ChannelWorld

Incorporated in 1999, Chennai-based Precision Techserve is clear about its course — to provide customers with services to enable them to design, build, secure, and manage their IT infrastructure. The company is equipped with the expertise to provide consulting, end-to-end integration and management to ensure continuous availability of IT services to meet various business objectives. The SI witnessed a revenue of Rs 22 crore this fiscal and has a track record of executing over 300 challenging projects. The company has been witnessing a steady growth on toplines over the years, and no recession has apparently slowed down its pace.

During this tough economic scenario, the company took the smart decision of shifting its focus towards selling services from selling products. It also realigned its strategy to do more deep selling and accordingly trained its sales team. For the past one year, Precision’s focus has been towards infrastructure management services and it is upbeat about its recently launched remote infrastructure service business and will be expanding its internal infrastructure to achieve its goal.

The company’s increased focus towards infrastructure management services and remote infrastructure management RIM helped generate more business from the IT/ITES segment, which is otherwise considered a badly hit market. BFSI segment has become a major driver of its network and information security solutions. Today, about 45 percent of the company’s revenue is generated through its infrastructure management services and the SI has set the goal of achieving more than 65 percent of its revenue through IMS in the next one year. Besides focusing on the Indian market, the company is serving customers in various other countries as well.

“At the heart of our business, we have over 700 multi-skilled infrastructure consultants whose expertise spans across converged IP networking, information security, unified communications, wireless networking, business continuity solutions, performance engineering, infrastructure management, and remote infrastructure support services,” says P Ramesh – Founder-Director & CEO of Precision Techserve. Ramesh believes his employees are the biggest asset and reaffirms that the company would stay competitive through continuous focus on human resource development. “We recognize each individual for their values and uniqueness and provide opportunity for continuous learning, development, and growth,” he adds.

Precision also has pan India presence with credible support network across the country. Ramesh is upbeat about the upcoming opportunities in the RIM space and is targeting to achieve a whopping growth to touch a revenue of Rs 50 crore next year.

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INTERVIEW

P Ramesh, Director& CEO, Precision Techserve summarizes the route of a 24x7 desk facility, cost reduction and layered services that helped them brave the recession.

Can you outline a few steps taken by Precision Techserve to ensure that business didn’t suffer due to the recession?
RAMESH: In an interconnected global economy, no organization can escape from the impact of this recession. We did face some heat, but we realized that the focus for all the companies now would be to look for additional value in reduced budgets. We recognized the opportunity this holds for a mid-sized, Tier-2 services company like Precision to target corporates, as they would be unwilling to spend on brands and would look for absolute value.

We did three things. We focused on internal cost reduction. Secondly, we reached out to corporates and offered our services. Most of them found our services to be 15 to 20 percent less expensive than the cost of similar services from Tier-1 services companies. Thirdly, we strengthened our consulting team and offered higher layers of services to customers who were now open to accepting these services. Though our overall marketing budget remains the same, we are now putting our money on focused; sales oriented initiatives rather than generic marketing programs.

What systems and procedures do you have in place to ensure customer retention and satisfaction?
RAMESH: We have implemented Microsoft Dynamics for our back-end order processing, project management and resource planning, to ensure timely and efficient project execution. We also have a 24 x 7 Service Desk Facility in place for our clients in our Global Competency Center to enhance service levels and customer satisfaction. Additionally, we provide our customers with value added infrastructure consulting and auditing services, which are beyond the actual scope of our Infrastructure Management Services. Going this extra mile has helped us ensure that we retain our customers.

Can you tell us about a challenging implementation done by Precision Techserve?
RAMESH: We have rolled out Infrastructure Management Services for an Insurance Company’s nationwide offices. The company needed a transfer of their services from the existing service provider, by deploying 140 infrastructure consultants across the country. The challenge was the timeframe. The transfer had to be completed in three to four weeks as the client was unwilling to pay for two teams. It was the integrated effort of our Resources, Transition and Service Delivery Management Teams, who worked day and night to ensure that we met the client’s target.

The planning in mobilizing resources, relocation of resources from the current team and orienting them on the new IT environment ensured that the project went off smoothly. We have completed over a year of service for that client and the customer has seen a marked difference in his service levels.