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INSZoom Automating Global Immigration
Karthik Sundaram
Friday, April 30, 2004
In the wake of the disastrous 9/11 attack, the U.S. Immigration Department issued a string of notices requiring companies in the U.S. to provide information on their employees who were nationals of certain countries. That threw the creaking human resources departments of many corporations into a tizzy. Most departments didn’t have sufficient information on the employee—starting from the current location of the employee. Immigration management is a complex and demanding chore for most HR managers in large corporations that have offices across the globe. Local laws and confusing interpretations leave this process a paper-heavy task, requiring much time and intense attention in managing it—from the first immigration applications to various statutes of maintenace, compliances and so on.

Umesh Vaidyamath was a web-commerce technologist at a leading semiconductor company in the Valley in 1999, when an immigration attorney sought his help in some web development work. While the brief was simple enough, Vaidyamath exploited the opportunity to understand the immigration business and developed a set of tools that “automated” many of the processes for the lawyer. That led to the sowing of the INSZoom seed—Vaidyamath’s startup that is building a dashboard for the immigration case management at human resource departments and for immigration attorneys. INSZoom delivered a highly robust, web-based solution set that helped the attorney in Case Management, Case Tracking, Immigration Forms Generator, Management Reports and an Address Book. Not surprisingly, the client turned an advisor and helped Vaidyamath take the concept a bit further, adding depth in the immigration laws and interpretations.

INSZoom now licenses out the software to over 500 attorneys in the U.S. alone. This led to a very interesting evolution. The attorneys’ clients were piqued by the online management system and were interested in deploying some version of it within their own enterprises. Vaidyamath was only too happy to build an enterprise version of his tool-kit. But not before some research.

“Companies are increasingly moving their employees across the globe, and this is causing immense stress on the human resources teams,” observes the CEO. “It is not just a simple of task of collecting employee information and passing them on to the immigration attorneys. The department has to keep track of all employees, their visa status, the various visa compliance issues and availability, global visa laws—the list goes on. It is not their core competence.” The INSZoom team matured the train of thought into a comprehensive list of requirements and mapped them into an automated process of check-lists and alerts.

“Immigration is still a paper-heavy process,” says Navneet Chugh, a leading professional firm based in Southern California. “The paper trail leaves many gaps in the process and misinterpretation of information is very common. Many of our corporate clients rely on professional firms for the case management.” In heed to this comment, Vaidyamath’s software establishes a single portal of information management. “The companies can have employees register their information and documentation once through the web portal. “The process is transparent enough to allow us to see what the employee is entering—we can stop errors right at the entry level,” says the HR manager of a leading IT consulting company that uses the product. Once the employee submits his or her documents, the seamless web platform runs checks on the package and shapes it into INS required format. “Clients who have submitted their employee cases through the INSZoom have seen significant speed of response in their cases,” says Meetesh Patel, an attorney in Beltsville, MD. The case now becomes a single item of manageability—clients and attorneys can update the case status, with mutual notifications. Once the case is processed, the client is now left with a neat file of information that can updated in synch with other HR software like PeopleSoft.

Vaidyamath is not stopping there. “The U.S. is only one market, but most clients have employees in other countries, including the Middle East and Africa, the Far East nations and so on,” comments Abhijit Basu, the director of marketing. “The world is truly a global village now.” Case in point is one of their marquee client, Honda. “The auto giant had over 500 people in various countries traveling to other destinations at any point of time,” remarks Vaidyamath. After a bake-off with other products from firms like Deloitte and Accenture, Honda chose INSZoom for its relevance and immediate applicability. Clients can be using the software in 15 minutes, says Vaidyamath, as there are no CDs to load and install.

As compliance demands increasing attention from the immigration gateways at enterprises, the hard-pressed HR departments can now use the software dashboard to collate information on all their immigrant employees and issue alerts. The board of advisors at INSZoom is a strategic one, and has helped in the company deliver current and correct information to clients. “It’s an online database, and has great case management and forms. The people who run it will add anything you can think of, and are always updating and adding new features,” says Michelle Gee, an attorney in San Jose, CA.

Vaidyamath has begun offering Canadian immigration facilitation and says it is only a matter of months before the other nations’ processes are added. “It does not stop here,” he says. Many companies have asked him to provide the immigration services too and he is examining the idea of establishing an online marketplace. “Law firms that use our software are interested in the enterprise entries we have made and are willing to be our partners in offering services.” That could well turn into a viable business for the startup. Should PeopleSoft sniff an interesting value proposition, it may add INSZoom as another trinket to its people management treasure trove.

INSZoom has used the DotNET platform for its technology, adroitly wrapping it around the Adobe PDF for the documentation management streamflow. “The rules and forms are so generic that once a client creates a case for one employee, it could be templated across many cases. Also, the software can be customized by the client for many other visas that he or she may be processing,” says Basu.

The license model seems to be paying off, as clients are attracted to the low entry cost. “We also provide immigration updates and news as a service, which clients use to showcase on their websites,” says Vaidyamath. “INSZoom is now working on translating the legalese into understandable communication that employees can relate to. All the concerned groups—employees, clients, and attorneys are happy with the transparency.” The promising startup is now into its fourth year of profitability, winning entry into large firms like Sirva—a global relocation firm that uses INSZoom extensively in its relocation service management. And Vaidyamath? He is thinking about how to issue a global ID to every employed person. “Passports will be passe soon,” he opines.

Park that thought, will you?
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