The high demand for IT services is driven by the rapid technological advances and this demand will continue to grow for many coming decades. The largely fragmented industry is host to multitudes of players making it difficult for enterprises and CIO's to put their finger on the solution provider best suited to them. In today's brutal business climate, a dearth of time and staff as well intense cost pressures have made companies focus on one aspect the most; Value for money. Understanding this underlying need of every enterprise is a company that has come up to become a trusted name in the IT Services arena – InterraIT, a provider of end to end life cycle solutions and services to Fortune 1000 companies.

Decoding their DNA

"The industry has changed drastically since we began our journey but some things have remained the same like appreciation of quality and value, and timely delivery," says Asoke Laha, Founder, President and CEO, InterraIT. InterraIT provides a wide array of services ranging from consulting to product engineering, virtualization, big data analysis to some of the biggest names in the market today. However Laha noticed a trend where IT departments were increasingly recognizing the need for enterprise mobility solutions as they required to deploy an increasing number of mobile applications to a broader and more diverse employee base. He also understood that supply chain management was a crucial piece of the puzzle as organizations were looking to make their business processes agile and seamless. He steered the focus of the company towards mobility and supply chain management and today InterraIT has become a force to reckon with in these domains.


Their technical expertise in the mobile domain coupled with knowledge and experience of enterprise solutions and telecom provides end-to-end solution to address all technical needs of customers. Armed with their expert professionals, the company is able to handle any requirement in the mobile domain. When a client from the healthcare sector had a requirement that would enable field workers or end users in remote data collection then this solutions provider developed a mobile application that did the above and added a few tweaks for added benefits such as faster data collection due to direct upload, SMS support for non-GPRS supported places, and application download enhancements. These helped the customer enormously in the field and streamlined their business data requirements.


Although their domain expertise is the area of focus on a superficial level, it is their core philosophy that attracts CIO's and enterprises time and time again. Laha and his team have built a quality driven organization. The time their first customer approached Laha for a project, InterraIT had 20 employees and no work; as the client had not promised a contract – it was just a test of their ability. Within a year, they had positioned 50 employees for that client and completely replaced the previous vendor. That is the tenacity and benchmark level of efficiency that this organization functions with. An instance of this is seen when one of their clients – a leading brand in manufacturing passenger cars – had an urgent requirement at one of their manufacturing locations; this service backpacker sent their tactical team to analyse the problem. The manufacturing unit was unable to track the shipments that went to U.S. from Mexico and a manual process resulted in higher inventory movement capture times and inefficiency and losses due to inventory reconciliation.


The team returned to the headquarters and built a state-of-the-art tracking interface, along with an ERP solution to manage the inventory data for each part and integrated it with web-based 'EMDCS' application used by dealers for placing orders. In the words of the CEO, "our recipe for success does not lie in the delivery of solutions, but it is the quality with which we deliver that seals our clients." Their solution was so effective for the client that they have not had to turn to another vendor yet – InterraIT continues to service them to this day with their life cycle solutions. And this has increasingly become a trend with their every client.

Inside the Bird's Nest

Staying abreast with technology is tantamount for a services company to be able to deliver to their clients but how do they manage to retain their identity?


"Our individuality lies in our culture. We spend immense time in training our people and that is how we build our culture in the company," says Laha. He is an ardent follower of Jack Welch's – former CEO of GE – philosophies and he does not like the term 'manage'. To him, it conjures up negative images, such as 'keeping people in the dark'. Laha's goal, in line with Welsh's philosophy is to lead, create a vision and make people passionate about their work. Such an image can literally be seen in their offices – managers do not sit behind closed doors; they sit with the team, the entire office has walls of glass – it is a demonstration of complete transparency that the organization upholds in its everyday functionalities.


Laha says, "We hand pick every employee before we recruit them because we have to be sure that they can be the future of our organization." The 17 year old services company is extremely fervent about the attitude of its employees because the culture that they have built in the firm is a direct reflection of their mission to deliver quality. InterraIT's culture is explained in a word that Laha uses quite often to explain what drives his company – Passion. They spend a good amount of time and resource on recruitment to ensure that they have the right fit for the bustling company. Upon looking through the glass walls of the company office, one will find that brevity of the CEO's words.


"We do not claim to have the most experienced or the best professionals in the industry. The people we have here are go-getters. We have a motivated bunch and they complete the projects within the timeline offered to them, by adhering to the quality standards," adds Laha.

Making Bonds on the Go

InterraIT works for some of the biggest names in all industries but even today, no project is too small for this humble man from Bengal. Conagra foods - leading packaged food company worldwide, Univar - one of the largest distributors of chemical products, Master Brands - leading manufactures of kitchen and bath cabinets in the U.S., and they have partnered with VMware, Oracle and HP, just to mention a few big names. Through the list of their clients and partners we do not just see the array of networks that they have created for themselves but also key relationships and the life long bonds with every signature on every contract.


"Ever since we commenced on this marvellous journey, we have treated every customer like they are our first and that is how we got to where we are today," he adds with a smile. Their business is run in the most traditional way. Their preferred choice of marketing is word of mouth – they serve their customers tirelessly and in turn their customers refer them to their partners. Verio, an NTT communications company writes, "Verio considers itself very lucky to have a partner such as InterraIT. A partner which understands our commitments, delivers tirelessly, and has the maturity to work with us." It is a plain testimonial of how their customers value their services and solutions.

NextPage >>