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July - 2008 - issue > Company Spotlight
Saviance Technologies - Bestriding on a Multi-pronged Strategy
Saheer Karimbayil
Monday, October 13, 2008
When a company plans to secure its feet on a competitive soil, the first issue to be addressed is to find a way for it to stand out in the crowd. In the usual scenario, the better way is to single out a niche area of business, develop expertise in that discipline and demonstrate oneself as an apostle in that domain. But, New Jersey-based Saviance Technologies, founded by Rohit Mahajan, does not want to confine itself into a single niche, and instead offers a wide spectrum of IT and related services to its clients.

Validating the logical reason behind the company’s multi-domain character, Mahajan, CEO, says, “Unlike single domain specialists who would have to look for clients only in their area of expertise, we can go to any client that is looking at a wide range of services, given our expertise in a large gamut of skill sets. And instead of convincing the customer ‘this is the solution we have’ we can say ‘tell us, what is your requirement’. And that approach is what makes us stand out.”

All Under One Roof

The Saviance Management Team has an extensive professional experience in both the US and India. Being educated at Harvard and Wharton, they combine cross-functional leadership skills with a deep understanding, unique perspective and hands-on experience of the business landscape in India and the US.

Run by thorough professionals heading a team of highly trained technical specialists, a wide range of skill sets are at the disposal of Saviance, which is suitable to almost all the possible requirements that may arise within the different walks of the industry. In IT consulting, the company offers SAP and Oracle application, Technology Infrastructure - which includes system administration, database administration, storage area networking and wide area networking, Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence (BI), and quality assurance and testing. Apart from these, web, mobile space solutions and IT training and recruitment including BPO services are the other arenas of the company, all of which have a client base across different verticals.

The company’s services like Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing are strongly supported by the uncompromising availability of the talent resources that the company has in its armory. Mahajan explains, “We work with several product companies in the U.S., using tools which are widely accepted in the market. Because of our wide network, we know people who are qualified, efficient and who have already worked on such projects. This advanced knowledge helps us to deliver the products in time. And this resource availability factor, coupled with qualification and capacity factor, wins the business for the company.”

Saviance began expending Open Source technology at a time when there were not many Indian players exploring this space. The company has taken a very pointed approach in the web and mobile space, with a sharp focus on Open Source technology. A highly skilled team is working at its center of excellence on technologies based on Ruby on Rails, Cake PHP, Java and ASP to deliver quality solutions for startups, non-profits and enterprise organizations. In the area of Web Development, the company uses a concept called ‘Scrum Methodology’, where the whole project is broken into separate parts and clients are given an opportunity to be involved in each phase of the project development by giving suggestions. This helps the company go into the minutest details of the application and deliver value to the clients. Several websites like that of the Noida Golf Course, USA Football Organization, InRhythm Services Private Ltd and informative portals like Advance Control have been developed by Saviance using the aforementioned technologies.

Saviance’s services in mobile space, one of the industry areas where explorations and innovations are in full swing, range from simple solutions like enabling web pages to be viewed on mobile devices to facilitating commerce and interfacing with the enterprise applications on the gadget. The reason why Saviance ventured into the mobile space was the convergence that has been taking place in web and mobile space in the recent past. And because of its expertise in Web 2.0 and community building projects, Saviance has delivered numerous projects in this space for clients in several geographies including the U.S., India, Germany, Middle East and Australia.

To comprehend the reasoning behind Saviance’s undertaking into such a wide space, one has to dissect it from the root. Instead of choosing the IT-choked West Coast of the U.S. as its location, the company, in 1999, fortified its base in the East Coast, a place which was more known for businesses like Financial Services, Retail, Pharma, Telecom and Manufacturing. And perhaps this environment has been conducive for Saviance to explore a multi-pronged strategy to tap customers in those different segments.

Cultivating Resources through Business Synergies

Since Saviance is catering to clients in different segments, the company has to keep pace with the fast and ever-growing IT and related developments. The company has business relationships with several organizations like the Walt Disney Company to promote IT education and training, including leadership, service, management, creativity and loyalty. For Saviance, education and training are the key catalysts to their success in the Indian geography. It has plans to launch recruiter academy institutes there with the help of such business synergies. And given the fact that the company is also into consulting and recruitment, these measures will help it meet its talent requirements.

This resource capacity has helped the company in several critical instances. If the company was able to meet tight deadlines of the projects for eminent clients like insurance firm Marsh Financial Service, it was only due to its resource availability factor.

In India

The company decided to start its operations in India when Ritu Uberoy, Founder and Managing Director, Saviance, relocated to India in 2005. An office was opened at Gurgaon near New Delhi, which functioned as a captive BPO for the company’s U.S. operations in the beginning. Later, Saviance started experimenting with outsourcing some of its work like recruitment and accounting processes to the Indian office with Ritu spearheading the growth of the company in the Indian sphere.

Saviance is now in the process of launching four products in the Indian market – Rivinium - an event management platform; iLuminix - an intelligent human resource management system which is under beta testing; SConnect - a corporate intranet that provides a single, secure access to a company’s private information; and Viburnix - an alumni platform that promotes professional networking. Saviance has chosen India for the launch as the emerging market here holds more scope than other mature markets. Also the kinds of products that Saviance is planning to come out with are still not very prevalent in India.

As the company strides confidently forward, Mahajan explains the background to the origin of his company. “I was assigned to set up a branch office of Global Infotech (where I worked prior to start my venture) in New Jersey. This exposure, apart from my extensive experience of working with software giants like Wipro and IBM
gave me an added heft to set up Saviance Technologies,” he says.

Having several experienced professionals on its management board like Ritu Uberoy, Gurudas Sarkar, COO and Sachin Bhatia, VP-Operations, Saviance is fast acquiring a good standing in the U.S. The Inc magazine recently selected Saviance Technologies as a part of the Inc 5000 companies in 2007. As a certified minority enterprise, the company sees immense potential for itself, especially since the Federal government in the U.S. has a law to promote minority business.

With a headcount of about 200 at present, Saviance Technologies is positioning itself to clinch more and more prestigious business deals from the U.S. Federal government. The IT heat is on and Saviance does not believe in taking the road less traveled. The company rightly exemplifies the fact that the big deal is not what one accomplishes, but rather, how one accomplishes it. And the important thing is that Saviance is immensely high on this ‘how’ factor.

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