Service companies are typically tethered to a scope written down while commencing the service. While IT infrastructure services need to be expanded as per business demands, IT security services need to change everyday to steer clear of the incessantly raining threats. No matter where one stands in today’s seismically growing IT world, SkillmineTechnology Consulting, an end-to-end IT Solutions organization, operates with sheer focus in solving client’s problem. Making its own mark in the industry, this Bangalore-based companyspellbinds clients with immense flexibility that spans beyond the scope to deliver not only apace with client’s changing business demands but also along with technological evolution.

The credit can be conferred to the deep technical expertise of the company’s distinctive team, who specialize in exploiting old technologies as well as available new technologies & trends to deliver the best solution.“We don’t have any general manager or project manager; managing is an additional skill. At Skillmine,even very senior people are hands-on technologists including myself. This gives us an edge when we undertake technology transformation or deliver technical services,” affirms AnantAgrawal, Managing Director –Skillmine. In fact, most of the company’s senior management including Anant has worked in services industry both as service providers and as end users of IT.

“I’ve seen a clear gap in both selling & buying sides. Skillmine attempts to bridge the gap by ensuring a guaranteed delivery which measures up and keeps the business advantage. We constantly structure ourselves to be able to deliver efficient & productive IT services as per the changing business paradigm. We have our own solutions and our own processes,” expounds Anant.The most significant benefit clients derive from the company is the ever-new innovative services Skillmine continuously delivers as a part of overall managed services.

Information Security has number of moving parts, whether it’s GRC or web security & advanced threat prevention. Understanding this, Skillmine brings all such aspects into its managed services which are handled by an alchemical mix of people, process & technology. For example, under Information Security services umbrella, the company has added a one-of-its-kind firewall assurance service, Security Operations Center Service (end-to-end monitoring) and security threat management services.

Absorbing Complexity, Exhibiting Simplicity

As impressive as that sounds, the company is also focussed to simplify services. “Complex products require more people to manage and often breakdown.Skillmine removes unnecessary parts and consolidates different functionalities of a system into one. We put our effort to absorb the complexity inside, so the simplicity can be exhibited from the outside to help the system perform better,” explains Anant. This technology-agnostic company strives to make technology more standard, less distributed, less dependant so that it becomes easy. It is confident that if something is simple enough, it will be better, cheaper and faster.

Instead of following customer’s instructions blindly, Skillmine crafts an end product that is simple, sustainable with caring customer investment in both tangible and intangible means. “Anyone can tailor a flashy suit, but Skillmine will ensure that the flashy suit is comfortable, climate-friendly, as per budget and is delivered on time,” explains Anant with a simple analogy. To demonstrate, if a customer asks Skillmine to do a “Data Leakage Prevention” initiative, the company suggest to eliminate the same and do “Rights Management” initiative which gives better results and still solves the leakage problem but avoids undertaking the expansive Data Flow Analysis which may change frequently.

One-stop-shop for All IT Needs

Redefining customization, Anant compares Skillmine’s managed service to a complete menu that has all items from soup to dessert, amongst which customers can choose according to their appetite. The company saves clients from the headache of wandering from vendor to vendor, handover issues and blame games by rendering end-to-end design & delivery services for IT infrastructure & IT security. This seam lessness from design, L1,L2 & L3 monitoring, architecture, implementation,

deployment to support, best ows customers with a completely owned delivery that is transparent and integrated. Skillmine is capable of setting up these services from scratch or transform existing IT Infrastructure & IT security services and make it a crown for client’s business. It takes complete ownership with an SLA and outcome-based model to operate and deliver these metrics-driven services. Skillmine is highly appreciated for its exceptional capability of working on the value chain of IT in both directions from design to implementation or the other way round.

Redefining customization, Anant compares Skillmine’s managed service to a complete menu that has all items from soup to dessert, amongst which customers can choose according to their appetite

When organizations need to undergo a transformation with a new technology (or any other technology for that matter), it has to be designed & implemented on-time, which requires deep capability & expertise. Having built a unique team, Skillmine is highly capable of diving very deep into designing & architecture to ensure that technology gets implemented perfectly. The company leverages its vast consulting expertise to understand, analyse and point out the technologies that are adaptable & sustainable.

IT has always been an enabling function to business. IT has to be in the backseat to business as just a propelling agent not a driver. Minding this, Skillmine leverages IT to transform business based on the nature of the business. Skillmine's IT consulting services help enterprises wishing to instigate a new project (say, setup a data center) by assessing existing environment, understanding their business and devising a roadmap & strategy that recommends the right way to adapt to a newer phenomenon or to exploit existing people, process & technology to tailor it to the new direction in business.

The company’s IT automation services induce efficiency in the business processes of large enterprises by automating manual processes as much as possible to make it people-less & paper-less and get predictable & accurate results.“The real benefit of automation is not reducing manpower cost, but reducing cycle time of business operations from days to minutes,” clarifies Anant.

Skillmine’s Applications Development & Management Service wing has released numerous smart applications akin to aggregation of real estate site for a construction broker in Australia, food delivery platform in Middle East and Steel brokering platform in central India, which has endowed clients with a competitive edge, increased customer outreach and reduced time to market. “Our values & thinking philosophies in IT revolves around providing predictable delivery every time, protecting & caring for customer’s investment and being the first for its customers,” summarizes Anant.

The lean, mean machine of Skill mine doesn’t face any failures, because everything from its internal infrastructure to its client services are based on private cloud. This enables us to keep all our information and services are available all the time, which also gives us a very good disaster recovery capability,” adds Anant.Since fifteen percent of the company’s capacity is in Mumbai,it can deliver the same service from Mumbai or direct its people to work from home, in case of any unfortunate incident in Bangalore.

Non-negotiable Continuous Improvement Program

Every managed service of Skillmine has a non-negotiable Continuous Improvement Program(CIP),according to which the company’s metric has to improve month-on-month while the team’s productivity has to multiply year-on-year. Hence, to accomplish “more for less” resources & time, Skillmine adopts modern techniques, performs automation and places better skilled people on ground. In any organization only part of all employees are really engaged with what they do at work, at Skillmine it is utmost emphasis given on developing personnel with no bossing culture“We create individual champions within the team, who drive at least one item in CIP on top of their day job. Once done, he moves on the next item, since we always create a long list of CIP,” explains Anant.

Skillmine has a very strong People Philosophy with its own leadership frame work and Learning & Development programme, on which it continuously invests to develop the capabilities as per the demand of market trends. The company’s delivery engine is adeptly driven by rontrunners: Jayakrishnan Menon(VP – Infrastructure & Technology Services),Cdr Ramakrishna Nyayapathi (Retd)(VP –Information Security),

Daniel Bandari (VP – Business Growth), Pallavi BS (HR Head),and Sharad Agrawal(Sr.Manager Project Management, Solutions & Delivery).

Upcoming Innovations

To tackle the most daunting challenge of talent management, Skillmine is moulding Uniconz (uniconz.com) a talent management service with a highly innovative model. The company expects to bring it alive by July 2017. Integrating more delicacies to its menu,Skillmine is taking a bold new step to become a technology elevated product company as well.The company is also concocting its own security IP around incident & threat management, which is now being alpha-tested and will be launched in next six months.

The company has grown a whopping 300 percent in topline in past three years and foresees 2x growth for the next three years. The company has enough resources to manage its growth at present, but might raise funds in 12-24 months for expansion purposes. Preferring to take the strong & steady growth route rather than growing at break neck speed, this 150+ people’s strong company targets to have 500 employees in Bangalore & Mumbai with a revenue of Rs.100 crore and intends to setup its sales offices in every Indian metro in the next 24 months. As Skillmine has all the right ingredients to proliferate its current stronghold on the market, it is safe to say that the company will touch these milestones sooner than it anticipates.

Panel

Key Management:

AnantAgrawal, Managing Director

With close to 25 years of IT exposure and managing large-scale global enterprises, Anant has a deep technical eye and very high focus on execution & customer satisfaction. Developing and managing Skillmine globally, he thrusts people around him to passionately develop their own skills technically to continuously enhance execution.

Jayakrishnan Menon (VP – Infrastructure & Technology Services)

Jayakrishnan is focusing on the IT Infrastructure, Platforms, Converged Architecture, Data Centre, Cloud, Mobility, IT Service Management, Security& Managed Services. Jayakrishnan brings 22+ years of experience in defining, designing, building and operating best-in-class enterprise IT and manages large scale programs.

Cdr Ramakrishna Nyayapathi (Retd) (VP– Information Security)

Cdr Ramakrishna heads Information Security, comes with abreast prior experiencewith the Armed Forces for more than 21 years culminating as functional head of CERT Navy. A result-oriented IT Security professional with an ability to envision and align strategic goals

Daniel Bandari (VP – Business Growth)

Daniel is focusing on deriving GTM Strategy across Skillmine offerings on IT Infrastructure, Service Management, Security and Managed Services. Daniel is a seasoned sales and operation professional with more than 20 years of Technical sales experience and a proven track record. He has a consultative selling style with ability to build and nourish lasting relationships

Pallavi BS (HR Head)

Pallavi is heading Human Resource of Skillmine, she holds master’s degree in Human Resource Management from VTU. Comes with over all 8+ years of extensive experience in managing Human Resource Function in IT Industry.

SharadAgrawal (Sr. Manager– Project Management, Solutions & Delivery)

Sharad owns Application Development and Enterprise Automation delivery at Skillmine. Comes with more than 12 years of experience and is passionate about continuous process improvement and multiplying productivity along with producing high quality output at first time. Hands on with programming skill, high capability in solutioning large systems to meet customer’ business goals.

Offices: Bangalore (Headquarter) and Mumbai (Sales, Customer Engagement and Project Management offices)

Offerings:

• Services: IT Security, IT Service Management& Automation, IT Consulting, Application Development & Maintenance and IT Staffing Services

• Solutions: Unified Security Management, Remote IT Infrastructure Management, Business & IT Automation, Offshore Delivery Center, iSight – insight into Customer experience and UniConz – Hiring unique & Right Consultants