Infinite Possibilities

Infinite's global marketing head is an avid cricketer. Every
Sunday, in Bangalore, he puts on his cricketing gloves, along with old time
friends. He unwinds; gets a fresh perspective on teamwork; laughs a lot. He also
has hearty giggles in office, at times over the perennial chicken and egg
problem.

Prashanth LJ does have an answer, but his colleagues from the
technology team often dispute that: "I believe that technology only
facilitates business. They say it facilitates, but also is at the core."

Perceptional differences there are, but nothing that would make
him not say that IT is an absolute key today. For a company dealing in
technology, it is absolutely crucial internally. But the support IT lends to the
marketing team is also noteworthy. Prashanth takes a cue from the manufacturing
industry where knowing the availability of spare parts and their use, in time,
could improve productivity in terms of inventory management, production and
distribution. In the software services business, the use of databases and
applications around them enables productivity, similarly, even for the marketing
folks.

Prashanth LJ, CMO, Infinite Computer Solutions

Every sales guy, for example, goes to meet clients. He captures
the essence of the account's probability, the potential of that account in
terms of sales, key business problems and their possible solutions. "This
gets re-validated by our technical team, but it is essentially the internal
sales management system that gives us the ability to project the potential for
business. This is an input for me to do pro-active hiring or training. It is
important for me to be ready," Prashanth says. IT becomes his best friend
here.

All communication that till some time ago was predominantly
happening through e-mail, now happens through the company's intranet.
"Today, any system support log or admin support log is put on to an
automated help-desk and everything is driven through the intranet. This also
becomes an identity issue when we say all of us interact through the intranet,
which was developed in-house. This is one of the areas where we have made a huge
change in terms of work culture, ethos and also the involvement of people,"
the marketing head says.

Mobility, in particular, has helped him channelize information,
making it productive as far as sales cycles go. From laptops, most of his
traveling team of marketers has now switched over to mobile phones for Internet
or intranet usage. "We have WLL access. So, we can access our intranet,
make presentations or even show clients abroad our knowledge repository. It has
also helped us a lot in terms of sharing information faster," he adds.
Whenever Prashanth requires information, he just sends out an SMS. If he wants
support, in terms of a fact sheet about a company, it now happens in a jiffy
because everybody is connected.

The knowledge repository is an institutionalized knowledge
center the company has built where all trends in the market; business; or
learnings from various projects are captured. This is used by Infinite's
marketing team as a benchmark to do focus selling. "We talk to a client,
understand his pain points and then map the current trends and the probable
business applications he could use. We use the learnings to basically project
values that can be had, mention changes that are happening and also give the
client a roadmap of strategically aligning our requirements with his, thus
giving the comfort of working with a partner who guarantee productivity of his
business applications and processes," he says.

Partnership is a word Infinite takes very seriously. It means
that the company knows the customer's business, can align with the business to
bring in performance in every spectrum. We understand fairly well what happens
when you use technology to leverage business efficiency, thereby giving the
client CIO an ability to focus on strategically aligning IT to his
business," Prashanth explains.

And what about his own CIO? The expectations are understandable.
The marketing group works on the market insights, which it captures from various
research reports and its own intelligence. The internal technology intelligence
per se has to come from the technology group in the organization-which
technology is shaping up, what would be its impact, how does it really impact
the business across various industries and how could the current technologies
really merge with future technologies. "How do we really add value in
telling our clients that any investments they make will be profitable? Our
objective is to optimize the returns on any investments made on technology and
also ensure that new technology ensures the right choice. These inputs come from
the CIO," the CMO says.

So both the marketing and technology teams, instead of sending
bouncers at each other's head, play together to get the maximum output. And,
as a business manager, anything that improves the performance of his business is
welcome to Prashanth. "You might have good people, but still the
productivity, performance, predictability-everything of the business which is
performance related-comes out of optimal usage of technology. Whether it is to
make the customer feel comfortable, or for business efficiency to be generated
from an internal perspective, technology plays a part," he concludes.

With everything converging on different planes-security, data,
voice-this is what will make his business more interesting. Of course, there
are technical challenges. There are technologies that have come in quite early,
which he feels he might not be able to use. But that is exactly the learning
curve his team is getting into, for customers' sake and to bring in
efficiencies of operations.

Goutam Das
in Bangalore

Personal Diary

Previous assignments:

• Prashanth started his career with Wipro in the merchant
  banking division.

• As a merchant banker, he had the distinction of handling 15
  issues without any penalty points. He also did the strategic business plan
  on whether Wipro should get into banking.

• Launched the first pre-paid card product, riding on the
  smart card platform for pre-paid payments and information processing. The
  technology was from Verifone; the business model was Wipro's, as was the
  entire implementation. Because of legal concerns of the RBI, Wipro closed
  down the business.

• He joined Verifone thereafter to head the e-cash and smart
  card initiatives as the business development and product manager,
  responsible for APAC.

• Worked with RBI to define the India payment standards called
  the smart standards.

• Partnered with Venture Infotech to set up a transaction
  processing company called e-Boss. It set up the card-acquiring
  infrastructure for credit, debit and smart card payments.

• Started another software services company focused on
  providing middleware applications to customers in the US, predominantly in
  the payment space.

• Worked with I-Vega-was looking at strategic initiatives.

Managerial style

Believes in empowerment. Believes that it is collective thoughts that make a
difference. As much as he says, he also hears what his colleagues say. Makes it
a point to spend one or two hours with his marketing team every week to ensure
that they talk things other than office; go out for walks.

Relaxes by...

Playing cricket near his home in JP Nagar, Bangalore. And, playing with his
four-year-old daughter.