This issue of Insights Success features Pletra Technologies India Pvt. Ltd. that provides designing and developing services to its clients at cost-effective prices.
1) Brief us about the journey of your company– origin, inception, early issues, success stories, and major milestones, to name a few.
The journey has been one of the most surreal experiences that we have had in our lifetime. It is one of those experiences which one cherishes and learns from. The 2 of us were always looking out for opportunities to become independent and start our own venture and with the advent of technology in our lives and the city that we lived in had a huge impact on the way we thought and moved about.
During this hunt and zeal of starting something new, we came across this idea of creating a company that would provide the growing and buzzing entrepreneurs of our country with software solutions to their technological needs.
Initially, it seemed a very abstruse task to even fathom the idea of starting an IT Consulting company but with grit and determination, we took that first step and eventually carried on with the idea.
Hiring was one of the most challenging tasks that I had to undertake but once we had the correct team it was all about creating a culture where everyone can grow and learn something new every day.
Our first client was a Pizza Eatery, we had everything on paper, how we will go about the project, who will do what and how we will start but then once we went on the floor, everything changed. Theory and Real-life are a very different ball game. But eventually, we did stumble upon a path and a way to create using Agile Methodology. The joy of actually showing our client his product and finally successfully delivering the final project was something I will take it with me for the rest of my life.
This journey has been really empowering to say the least and I am grateful to the almighty that I am in a position that I can cherish those moments and I would also like to thank my family for supporting me during the good and the bad times. If not for them I would have left the venture mid-way. It was their support which helped me and shouldered me and made me ponder and realize that a journey is more than its destination. It is about the process.
2) Brief us about the CEO/Founder of your company.
Nirupama Srivastava: She is a visionary who is looking out for endeavoring into roads less traveled. She is an avid reader and prefers to learn and understand how certain things work and how should they be aligned to make a business out of it. She is a shrewd businesswoman and has an acumen of operations and hence she looks after our India office and Day to Day operations.
Rakhi Ranjan (USA): A lady whose virtues are unmatched but so is her humility. Coming from a humble background she understands the value of every penny and hence she looks after the finances and also leads our US office.
3) Kindly talk about the exclusive products or services offered by your company. How does it distinguish you from your competitors?
Pletra Technology has the end-to-end capability for complete Salesforce consulting, cloud implementation, customization, integration, migration, maintenance, and support. Pletra provides FULL-CYCLE SALESFORCE CONSULTING SERVICES, DevOps, MicroServices & many more emerging technologies at every step of the digital transformation to help companies reach their business goals.
This is something that we at Pletratech are proud of. Right from the start, we have been of the belief that if someone is trusting us then it is our duty to make sure that the entire process that he is with us becomes hassle-free for him. We believe that now we are in a position where we can handle and manage the nitty-gritty and the minor hiccups that one faces, and it should not be transferred to our clients and that I believe is the USP of our brand.
To be honest, you will get numerous other companies that provide technical consulting some may be technically stronger than us and some maybe not. But one thing that helps us create a name for ourselves and create that niche is the culture that we propagate. We are a firm believer that the Client is the King. We stand by it and we make sure that every one of our multiple clients feels the same way. The way we interact, the personal understanding and the bond we create, the apt solutions we provide, the reduced delay and the hassle-free process has helped us distinguish our Brand from the competitors.
4) What is the vision and mission of your company?
The vision of the company is to be nothing less than realizing the full potential of the Technology universal access to research and education, full participation in culture to drive a new era of development, growth, and productivity.
The mission is to Innovative Internet Technologies and ground-breaking ideas aimed at streamlining the integral processes of businesses and enterprises using Information Technology and thought leadership.
5) What kind of challenges has the company faced industry-wise?
- Increased competition
Many firms that are not large, established industry players and don’t have a disruptive business model in the works are worried about their ability to stay competitive. After all, a great deal of consolidation is happening in our industry, and new technologies threaten to commoditize lucrative bread-and-butter services.
- Changes in how buyers purchase services
The increased use of online search, social media and other non-traditional channels to find and vet IT consulting firms have been a big challenge and an opportunity for us to shape and mold ourselves and has been the primary reason for us using social media as a primary tool to entice potential customers.
Even the way people get referrals has changed. Many referrals today are made by people who never even hired our firm, but they know about us from other sources. Increasingly, we are trying to build our reputations online — through sophisticated content marketing programs and direct engagement in social media.
- Unpredictability in the marketplace
Whether you are talking business or politics, these are turbulent times. The IT consulting marketplace is evolving quickly from one that relied primarily on interpersonal contact to develop new business (think networking or personal referrals) to a wide-open battlefield on the Internet. But there is more feeding the market frenzy than business development changes. The whole landscape is rapidly evolving, too — acquisitions and mergers are happening at a record pace, and new well-funded firms with different business models pop up with unnerving frequency. This churning marketplace is here to stay, and to be the most successful firm we will have to learn and adapt to uncertainty.
- Downward price pressure on services
Another concern is increasing pressure to lower prices. As cheaper alternatives and more efficient technologies emerge, even expertise-driven IT consulting services are subject to fee erosion. But this trend represents an opportunity, too. For example, Pletratech a relatively new and a small firm can leverage the power of marketing automation and artificial intelligence — and marry these technology efficiencies with our expert insights can use it to lower our costs and eventually reduce our final cost and we can use it to differentiate ourselves.
- The need for new skills
As new technologies and techniques arise in the marketplace, we sometimes feel an unrelenting pressure to keep up with the constant change. Because, If we don’t, a competitor will.
There are two primary ways firms we can acquire new skills: 1) by training their professionals; and 2) hiring new talent who already possess those skills. We at Pletratech use both of these approaches, but each comes with challenges. For example, training existing staff takes people away from lucrative billable work. And hiring new talent in a highly competitive environment can be very expensive.
Conclusion
Turbulent times generate tremendous change, and this is precisely the reality that our industry is facing today. To adapt to rising marketplace pressures, to get ahead and stay there, we will have to adopt an array of marketing techniques. But deep in the forge of adversity lies opportunity — to build resilient and robust brands.
6) How have technological advancements and innovation in the industry affected your business?
It has come up with its own set of Pros and Cons:
As discussed earlier one of the biggest challenges that we as an industry face is the fact that we have to keep up with the change and for that we must continuously be a firm that strives for learning and keep our employees updated.
As new technologies and techniques arise in the marketplace, we sometimes feel an unrelenting pressure to keep up with the constant change. Because, If we don’t, a competitor will.
There are two primary ways firms we can acquire new skills: 1) by training their professionals; and 2) hiring new talent who already possess those skills. We at Pletratech use both approaches, but each comes with challenges. For example, training existing staff takes people away from lucrative billable work. And hiring new talent in a highly competitive environment can be very expensive.
But on the other side with the advent of machine learning, automation and productivity tools like Slack, CRMs , Trello we have come to realize that we can reduce our costs significantly using technology and hence pass on the benefits to our customers and this is one of the primary reason that we have been able to create a brand which stands for ‘The Best Value For Money’.
7) What are the consulting strategies adopted by the company and who are its primary target customers?
We implemented a lot of imperatives and tried a lot of strategies that varied from transforming ourselves from a company that used to follow a waterfall model in devising or creating software to aligning us to an organization that uses Agile. We had to incorporate a lot of changes and also had to become a lean and a fitter organization, design different positions and hire equally abled people.
We also used DevOps and put in a lot of effort into making it our forte and become the frontrunner in serving our clients with the same.
Salesforce has been our forte and this is something that we as an organization really believe in and really want to grow in.
We are a firm that never stops believing and trying new things. Be it AWS, AZURE, Mobile App Development, Web Development, Machine Learning, Python, Node, React, etc.
We are looking at customers who have small, medium, big and complex technical problems and are looking for a company that serves them more than their traditional consulting firm, eventually and looking out for a family with whom they can feel at home with.
8) How do you portray the future of your company in the next decade?
In the next decade, we see ourselves as the change we have always stifled for. We have had the very idea of developing into 4 major verticals vis-à-vis:
Salesforce
We are aiming to be the one-stop portal for our clients where the can come and solve all the Salesforce related issues that they pertain to. We really believe in Salesforce and we believe it is going to be the next big thing. CRM, App generation and everything else we have our experts who not only help you understand how Salesforce can help you grow but also provide a solution to your needs.
E-commerce
Ecommerce only forms 3% of the Total Retail Market in the world. Hence, we believe that it is a segment that has a lot of potentials and will shape the world. We want to be at the forefront of this change and create software for our clients which can help them transform this business. We want our client’s customers a reason to stick with their site and an online presence has become intrinsic for every business to reach customers and grow.
Web and Application Development
With the advent of technology and the growing internet penetration we want to spend the next decade in understanding and providing a platform for our clients to utilize AWS, AZURE, Salesforce and incorporate them in their day to day activities to fully exploit their working and transform the way their business works.
Corporate Training and Development
We at Pletratech firmly believe in the concept that one can only grow when the people around him or he does as well. Machine Learning and automation have become a serious threat to present-day jobs and learning and re-learning is the name of the game. Everyone be it a professional who has been working for 10, 20 + years or a new entrant they will have to change and adapt and learn new skills every few hours. Pletratech wants to be here and currently has a module to teach interested learned to understand and implement Salesforce.
Ui Path (Robotic Process Automation) (RPA):-
Robotic Process Automation is the technology that allows anyone today to configure computer software, or a “robot” to emulate and integrate the actions of a human interacting within digital systems to execute a business process. RPA robots utilize the user interface to capture data and manipulate applications just like humans do. They interpret, trigger responses and communicate with other systems in order to perform on a vast variety of repetitive tasks. Only substantially better: an RPA software robot never sleeps, makes zero mistakes and costs a lot less than an employee.
9) How ‘Maharashtra State’ as a business demographic has affected your daily operations?
Some of the major initiatives taken by the government to promote the IT and ITeS sector in India are as follows:
- The government has identified Information Technology as one of 12 champion service sectors for which an action plan is being developed. Also, the government has set up a Rs 5,000 crore (US$ 745.82 million) fund for realizing the potential of these champion service sectors at India Level.
- As a part of Union Budget 2018-19, NITI Aayog is going to set up a national level program that will enable efforts in AI and will help in leveraging AI technology for development works in the country.
- In the Interim Budget 2019-20, the Government of India announced plans to launch a national program on AI* and setting up of a National AI* portal.
- National Policy on Software Products-2019 was passed by the Union Cabinet to develop India as a software product nation
10) As a Start-up, what do you think is required for growth particularly in your industry?
I believe as of now apart from all the technological advances, I really appreciate what the government is doing for nurturing the Start-Up culture in our country and I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for everything that they are doing. But then again there are a couple of things which I would like to mention
The government must understand that entrepreneurs are not made. They can only be nurtured, on their own terms and schedule. All they can do is promote positive serendipity, and make sure that when all the stars align, the entrepreneur doesn’t crash into a wall because they lack some basic skills, meet an insurmountable bureaucratic obstacle, or miss basic infrastructure (e.g., a payment gateway).
Just as in lifecycle marketing, the government must target people with different messaging and products over time, satisfy their pressing needs, and influence their behavior at each stage.
They must first inform people unfamiliar with entrepreneurship that this path exists, show them that they can do it, and develop their skill set so they have a higher chance of success once they start a venture.
They must then increase the chances of external factors falling into place through networking opportunities, financial support, counseling (can’t expect people to risk and go out of their comfort zone when they lack that comfort zone in the first place), mentoring, and so on.
