OA COMPSERVE: Focused approach towards services

After over 25 years in the business, New Delhi-based OA Compserve has come a
long way. Its strategy to keep a strong focus towards adding value to services
has helped the company make headway into newer customer segments and product
verticals as well.

With an employee strength of 255, the company generated Rs 78 crore as
revenue for 2004-05, with services chipping in almost 10% to 15%. Leveraging on
its core competencies in the services sector, OA Compserve won about 12 big
contracts this year.

Some of these projects include facility management contracts for the Ministry
of Finance and also designing end—to-end solutions for enterprises. The
company also has a healthy and continued relationship with Hutch in the services
space.

As part of its strategy to better concentrate its energies on different
segments, the company converted two of its divisions into two different
companies - Silicon Comnet and Renovision Comnet. OA Compserve handles storage
and security, Silicon targets turnkey projects and industry verticals and
Renovision is into consumables. This strategy has worked well for the company
and has given the parent company a more focused approach towards its flagship
services business.

Moving forward, Silicon Comnet is working towards generating business from
areas like high-end security, network management, network audit and network
operation center. All this would be done keeping in mind its core focus towards
delivering facility management services for its set of clients.

Already an established player in the consumables sector, Renovision Comnet
would now be working towards further strengthening its position in the market.
With the exponential business growth in upcountry markets and with IT companies
venturing into smaller cities, the company wants to address regions like UP,
Haryana and Punjab. It will soon launch new products in the market and increase
its coverage in the southern part of the country.

The company's biggest strength comes from its human resource pool-- people
who work for the company. But at the same time, lack of access to funds acted as
a roadblock to OA's plans to expand its operations. The company is working
towards this end, and is negotiating with several companies to funds it upward
growth.

As of now OA's biggest task will be consolidating operations of its three
groups under the parent company. This will be beneficial in the long run, as all
three companies will use the same fixed assets, which in turn will lower
overheads.