TEAM COMPUTERS: It Takes A Team To Tango

Ranjan Chopra wanted to succeed in the channel business and he knew the best
way to achieve this was to have a strong team in place. This is precisely why he
named his company Team Computers, to reflect his ideology.

Team Computers is a Rs 70 crore company with 60% revenue coming from systems
integration. Surprisingly, this is a new venture for the company, which started
operations as a reselling organization. "One has to change with time and
incorporate the changes to perfection," says Ranjan.

RANJAN CHOPRA Changing with time and incorporating these changes to perfection

ADOPTING TO NEWER TRENDS

Starting as a mere hardware company in January 1988, Team Computers shifted
its focus to services and systems integration in mid-90s. The decision was
reached when Ranjan realized that customers did not merely want to purchase
hardware from Team, but also wanted services to be bundled in as well.
"Customers wanted the entire package as they had immense confidence in us
and therefore we decided that we had to shift from box-pushing to total solution
providing," states Ranjan.

Once the company ventured into giving end-to-end solutions, the company found
business moving swiftly and it built up a strong clientele of 600 customers. And
every month it is adding 12 new customers to its kitty.

"In the salad days of Team, we concentrated on small business houses.
But today, we only concentrate on medium businesses as we have realized that the
potential of making more business is much more in this segment," Ranjan
points out.

With the burgeoning of customers, Team started employing more people and
opening new offices. Team today has over 700 employees spread across 26 branches
in the country, apart from a corporate office in Delhi. A major bulk of Team’s
business is done in the northern and western regions.

TRAINING PAYS

Besides, systems integration and services, Team Computers is also into
networking, which comprises 10% of its revenues. Ranjan expects this business to
grow at a rate of 30% on a year-on-year basis and wants to be all geared to take
full advantage of it.

One way of this is by investing in training and Team is doing this with
gusto. "We have a training center in Noida where we train around 500
employees every year for the technologies that we intend to sell or are already
selling," Ranjan says.

Team made sure that it has a well-documented HR policy, to ensure that its
attrition rate is much lower than the industry average. "Our attrition rate
is just 6% to 7%, because we have a very transparent HR structure,"
explains Ranjan. The company also ensures participation from employees in all
corporate decisions and take it very seriously.

Says Ranjan’s Personal Assistant, Prakash Pal, "The work culture in
Team is one of the reasons why employees stick to the company. The transparent
HR practices is most
laudable."        

BUFFERING BOTTOMLINE

The primary focus of the company in the current fiscal would be to provide
value-added solutions, which would ensure better bottomline. "Most business
houses today have the basic infrastructure in place and what they want is
value-added solutions. So we are working on a Linux platform and developing
open-source solutions for client-deployment," Ranjan elucidates.

He is a great advocate of the open-source phenomenon and strongly recommends
it to his customers. The reason is simple–the investment required is minimal
and customers can choose to deploy it for free and pay only when they are
thoroughly convinced about its benefits. 

Team is also training its sights on services. Presently, 20% of the company’s
revenue comes from pure-play services, since it is the authorized service
provider for HP, IBM, Toshiba and Intel.

"I feel the ideal scenario would be when we have 50% revenues come from
services," hopes Ranjan. He expects services will contribute 35% to the
overall revenues only by the end of next fiscal. "We expect to clock Rs 100
crore revenue in the coming fiscal and service will be our core leverage in
achieving this," he remarks.

TEAM SERVE

Team Computers has carve a niche for itself in the facilities management
space and last fiscal, it created a separate entity called Team Serve, headed by
Tanmoy Majumdar, to focus on this business stream. This division would
concentrate on those companies that outsource their non-core IT activities.

Ranjan is confident that starting a new division to focus on this growing
business was a smart move, as he expects this market to grow substantially in
the next couple of years. Tanmoy shares his enthusiasm.

Despite being just a year old, Team Serve already posted a turnover of Rs 1.5
crore last fiscal. But he has great expectations for the future. Already it has
bagged customers like NIIT, Hewitt, WNA and couple more. "We would like
Team Serve to grow by 100% in the next three fiscals. This will help consolidate
our strengths and we can do more projects," he adds.  

BIG DEALS MAKE BIG DIFFERENCE

One of the major projects that the Team executed last fiscal was deploying
150 notebooks for McKinsey for Rs 2 crore. It bagged a Rs 3 crore order from WPP
and also installed 1,000 HP MFDs across 1,000 districts for Bharat Electricals.
This project was executed within a time-frame of three months.

One reason why Team has been able to bag and execute these projects quickly
is its well-established presence in the country. "We are present in 26
locations and customers are assured that they will get good post-sales support
irrespective of where they are based," Ranjan adds. 

Team is confident that it will get more projects from MNCs, where the margins
are better and the payment assured. But it would not like to venture into the
government sector as they are not well-aware of the importance of value-added
solutions.

"This customer segment just wants to have the basic infrastructure in
place. That is why the conscious decision to stay away from this sector, though
they are one of the biggest IT spenders," says Ranjan.

This fiscal, Team wants to touch the magical revenue figure of Rs 100 crore.
And with the solid support of its team members and its loyal clientele, it is
well on its way to achieve it.

TEAM DQCI