When you visit the Collabera, Inc. website, the words “Living on the Edge” are found in large letters. These words set the right tone for an Information Technology (IT) company that continued growing through the recession and reports fiscal year 2011 revenues of $440 million which reflects a 17.3 percent growth rate. The company employs 6,500 employees in the U.S., Europe and India. Especially inspiring is the fact that Collabera is a minority business enterprise (MBE). It is also one of the largest privately held minority owned global IT services firms in the U.S. providing on-shore, off-site and off-shore business.
Founder and chair, Hiten Patel, and Vice President of Sales, Ashwin Rao, are willing to share their innovative strategies for growth. The company offers a full range of IT services including application, enterprise and infrastructure services, in addition to consulting and the ability to call upon a large vetted contingent workforce. Yet merely knowing the types of services they provide doesn’t tell you how the company has managed such phenomenal growth through economic upturns and downturns.
Once you understand the uniqueness of Collabera’s approach to the marketplace, it’s easier to understand their success. Rao defines it with one word – clientcentric – which means the business focuses on innovative delivery of value added services to customers. The clientcentric approach drives everything the company does, and the result is service delivery that includes a mix of onshore and offshore support services, adaptability to customer requirements, development of strong competencies in application and infrastructure services, and a full range of consulting services.
Growth has come primarily from the sale of direct value added client services, with organic growth through outsourcing only used to fill gaps based on client needs. Collabera has chosen to develop a long term relationship working with a relatively small customer base of 50 clients rather than hundreds. Patel states, “Collabera has chosen to go deep by providing select clients a full range of IT services and then expanding into the marketplace as needed for continued growth.” Once again, it’s the clientcentric philosophy at work.
According to Patel, Collabera has “one of the strongest MWBE mentoring programs in the industry.” The company has set a goal of 15 percent of outsourcing to be MWBE business. The mentoring program focuses on the issues that challenge many minority and women owned businesses including finding venture capital to expand capacity, leveraging processes to increase revenue, qualifying for contracts with larger customers, and learning to use innovative approaches.
Collabera even goes one step further. The company uses its own proprietary internal software and processes to provide small companies real world guidance. The goal is to create a framework where opportunity is created for all involved.
The company also takes corporate responsibility to the community-at-large just as seriously. It mentors a variety of small partners and corporations, but also works with nonprofits. For example, the company participates in charitable events like those held by Big Sister/Big Brother. It supports local communities in its global locations. For example, Collabera offers education programs to children in a village in India where some of their offshore workers are located.
Adaptive Business Model
The competitive strength of Collabera lies in its ability to adapt its services to what customers want and need through the onshore-offshore business model. The company starts projects using onshore staff and suppliers first and then goes offshore as needed. This model is highly adaptable to varying economic conditions and to customer requirements creating long term sustainability.
During periods of economic growth, Collabera can invest more resources onshore to complete large projects. During economic downturns, the company can tighten its budget and spend more offshore. One of the challenges the company faces is transitioning projects quickly when the economy shifts. Clients want more for less during economic downturns, which means Collabera must return a faster quality performance without raising costs.
Perhaps the best way to understand Collabera’s unique approach to client service is to look at an actual project. A Fortune 500 financial services client was working with 10 to 12 vendors to obtain a set of services and was experiencing ongoing cost and project problems. Approaching Collabera, the client discovered that the company could provide all the services it was taking 12 vendors to currently manage. Collabera first added some of the current vendors to an onshore project development team to shorten the learning curve. Once a stable state was reached, Collabera approached the client and discussed cost optimization. With that information, a large portion of the project was sent offshore.
Collabera chair Patel pointed out that, “No other vendor could have managed this project so well because Collabera is able to put into place all engines needed for success – application, infrastructure and consulting services.”
The Only Way to Live
There are many minority and women owned businesses poised to succeed like Collabera but are in need of mentoring to learn how to best capitalize their particular brand of innovation. Collabera’s qualities serve as a model for many of these companies. The clientcentric approach, innovative and flexible global business model, MWBE mentoring program and support of communities all blend together to form a thriving company that gives voice to the successful minority business. For Collabera, living on the edge is the only choice.
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