SPI drives into its 8th year in business

An emphasis on quality and a group of able onshore managers saw the Mysore-based consulting and systems integration company Software Paradigm International's (SPI) grow as a low-cost, high-quality provider of IT and BPO services over the last seven years.

Speaking to Business Standard on the eve of SPI's 7th anniversary, SPI chief executive officer Siddharth Mookerji outlined his company's growth and the challenges ahead.

"The matrix management structure of having a project management team in Atlanta to ensure offshore integrity and a team of developers in Mysore, who work towards meeting the goals set by customers, were the key factors that has helped SPI grow at an average of 100 per cent a year," he said.

"We started operations in Mysore with four people in 1997 at a space rented out by Keonics and in 1999 moved to our own premises with 99 people. In 2004, we added our second unit and our headcount, including that of BPO operations, increased to 300," Mookerji said.

In 2004, SPI saw a combined turnover of $10 million in the US and India, with exports from India amounting to Rs 12 crore.

Established in Atlanta, US, in 1994, SPI focuses on retail and logistics, financial services and healthcare industry. Today it serves eight active customers, half of them Fortune 100 companies, and works on 20 active projects of which 90 per cent are IT-related and the rest BPO.

The company has partnered IBM for providing software development, IT services and is looking at BPO opportunities. SPI is also the sole offshore IT service provider to US-based staffing firm Metrics.

SPI's support functions like administration, accounting, human resources, legal and others are housed both in the US and India, catering to the requirements of the region.

A captive BPO unit in India, set up in 2003 and with a staff strength of 30, does the back-end work for the support functions. The BPO unit recently also went external, offering back-end customer care and administrative services to US-based clients from healthcare and financial services sectors.

The company's indigenous flagship products include SPIProject.com, a web-based knowledge repository that stores information based on various industry verticals and is also a critical tool to track changes made by users or clients. A similar tool SPITracker.com is in place for the company's BPO operations.

SPI also has a continuous training endeavour with KPMG to train its employees for flawless productivity. With a Six Sigma programme in place, SPI currently operates with 12 Black Belts and employees are constantly evaluated based on critical-to-quality metrics. SPI was ISO 9001:2000 certified in 2002 and is presently operating on CMM I Level 5 standards.

The company is also ramping up its sales force in the US and is looking at adding 10 more customers this year.

By end of 2005, SPI sees a growth of 80 per cent in IT businesses and about 120 per cent in BPO work. The company has also acquired 8.5 acres of land in Hebbal for growing its BPO operations to a 3000-strong team in 3-5 years.