InterraIT: Firing on All Cylinders

The US-headquartered IT services and solutions company, InterraIT, celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, wants to be rated as one of the Top Five Best Employers of Choice in India. Asoke K. Laha, one of the founders of InterraIT, and now President & Managing Director, talks to VARIndia how the company has become a cut above the rest in such a short span of time.

Recently, InterraIT made it to the top twenty employers of choice in India. The survey that was conducted by Dataquest placed InterraIT in the 19th position. Given the fact that the company appeared for the DQ Employer of Choice survey for the first time, it was, indeed, an achievement worth shouting from the rooftop. However, not sitting pretty over the laurels, the US-headquartered IT services firm has made it a point to be rated as one of the Top Five Best Employers of Choice in India in the imminent future.

Founded in 1996, the company has been able to scale many new heights. What makes the firm a cut above the rest? Mr. Laha attributes this increase in the company’s fortunes to the quality of its people and the management. “A quality that is nurtured on a continuous basis by the innovative HR practices and an open and dynamic environment. Our management style is employee-friendly: being trained in the US and worked in the US most of my adult life, I tried to adopt the best practices of US management in InterraIT,” adds Mr. Laha.

“I think the critical aspect that helps us be rated highly is the quality and value of the deliverables. A direct outcome of the quality of the people within the company. I would say the innovative HR policies, our inherent belief in quality service and an environment that allows people to grow and mature are the factors that have helped InterraIT achieve the high ratings. Meeting the dateline, and exceeding the customer satisfaction are our DNA,” says Laha.

Showing a fairly impressive growth rate of 85 per cent each year for the last two years, InterraIT operates in the US, Europe, Canada and Asia markets and has two development centres in India – one in Noida and the other in Kolkata. “InterraIT essentially works on an onsite-offshore model. These development centres undertake the development activities offshore,” adds Mr. Laha.

InterraIT is a niche service provider, some of the services provided by the company include Application Migration, Application support and Maintenance, Custom Application Development, Infrastructure Management, Packaged Solutions Management, Product Engineering and QA & Testing Services. The solutions offered by the company are Enterprise Application Integration, Identity Management, Mobile Solutions, Open Source Engineering, Supply Chain Management, Technical Communications and Web Services & SOA.

India finds a prominent place in InterraIT’s scheme of things. The company launched the domestic sales team under the guidance of Sasanka Ghosh (ex-CMD of CMC) in 2004. In the last two years, this team has expanded and has been working towards creating a footprint for InterraIT in the domestic market. Outsourcing to Indian companies specially operating in offshore model has received a lot of flak of late.

Of late, there has been a lot of speculation with regard to the security and quality issues associated with outsourcing to companies with the offshore model. “This has been happening due to a lot of companies with a short-sighted view of simply getting accounts without the infrastructure or support being in place,” maintains Mr. Laha.

Quality has never been soft-pedalled at InterraIT. “As a matter of fact, it has been a way of life at InterraIT; it permeates to all levels within the company. We went in for ISO 9001:2000 and CMM at a time when we were doing quite well without it, but I felt it important to ensure the quality within the company,” says Mr. Laha. The company has an independent quality group whose only job is to ensure the quality across the company and projects. “As for security, we have been handling extremely sensitive clients including some in the healthcare or IP-driven product development companies. To ensure their security, we have established stringent security measures that have enabled us to service our clients with the utmost of quality and ensure security for them,” he adds.

No description of InterraIT will be complete without referring to their HR practice.

“The core value of InterraIT is dedication to the highest quality of customer service. To do this, it is essential to ensure that you form an organization that is in complete agreement on the philosophies, goals, values, strategies and customer deliverables. It has to be a way of life for them – the people who are accountable – individually and collectively and this is what our HR practices strive to do,” says Mr. Laha. “With this in mind, we introduced the concept of an ‘Individualized Corporation’ that empowers employees to take decisions and risks at work and creates a sense of ownership. Each unit working as an Individualized Corporation and at the same time working in alignment with the company’s goals,” explains Mr. Laha.

InterraIT has a “hire for attitude” policy – the aim to find and keep people who fit. The philosophy, in short, is “Hire for attitude and Train for skills”. “There is also a lot of focus on people development with stress on defining and rationalizing roles within the company and competency development. A number of internal as well as external training programmes are organized to enable employees to constantly upgrade their skill sets,” says Mr. Laha.

With the Global Delivery model involving a lot of cross-cultural interaction, the employees are also vigorously trained on the behavioural aspects to better understand and interact with the clients. An in-house training resource pool works constantly at enhancing in-house technical skills and this result is a well-rounded techno-savvy team. Based on the feedback of the employees, the company set up a ToastMasters Club to enhance communications skills across the organization.

“We operate on the premise that one of the best ways of developing people is by putting them at jobs that stretch them, while offering support and helping them succeed. Tough deadlines and a dynamic environment ensure that this happens,” adds Mr. Laha. The company also has an exhaustive Talent Review system. The managers are encouraged to work as mentors and coaches – identifying the “Star performers” putting them on the fast track and training the others. The Pay-for-Performance philosophy further enhances this system by being a strong motivator for them to perform.

Finally…

To further the feeling of ownership among the employees, the top management holds a regular quarterly “Comms” meeting to discuss the achievements and planned movement of the company. This is the forum where the employees come forward and participate in deciding the direction of the company. “We believe that with a motivated and flexible work group of employees the sky is the limit. In addition, the Managing Director has a monthly lunch meeting with randomly selected twelve people,” maintains Mr. Laha.