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The ‘Proven Way’ to IT success
By Pranz Kaeno
IT is a very competitive industry.
Achieving success in this field demands vision and
tremendous amount of determination. Ajit Nair, founder,
chairman of the board, and chief executive of ProV, is no
stranger to IT success. Together with his chief information
officer and country manager John Killion, he shared to me
how his company is achieving rapid growth here in the
Philippines.
ProV International is an IT services
company based in Tampa, Florida. Powered by a global
workforce to provide end-to-end IT services for enterprise
clients, ProV International employs several hundreds of
senior consultants in its Philippine and India Delivery
Centers, and Florida headquarters. The Manila delivery
center caters to more than 20 countries including Europe and
the United States, and is rapidly expanding.
The company’s name ProV came from Pro,
short for ‘‘proven,’’ and Latin word Via which means
‘‘way.’’ Combine the two and we have ‘‘proven way.’’
Through Nair’s leadership ProV has
garnered recognition and awards including being named as one
of the Top Businesses by DiversityBusiness.com. He was also
honored as the Best MIS and IT Executive in the 2006
International Business “Stevies” award, and was a finalist
for the Best Executive Award in the 2006 American Business
Awards.
Nair decided to invest in Manila after
being wowed by the locals’ professionalism. He was impressed
by how well they dressed and communicate, and by their
attitude and good tech skills. He also noted how the city is
“So Americanized. When you go to a restaurant in the
Philippines you would think you are in the States.” The ProV
chief executive is all praises with the suppliers as well as
with the government, “I’d rate it a 10 out of 10 working
with the Philippine government. It has been extremely
smooth.”
One of the things Ajit enjoys doing in
the Philippines is client interactions at restaurants. “The
quality of food is so good. Feels like New York. Italian,
Persian, Chinese, Indian, Spanish restaurants right next to
each other.”
The diligent Nair spends his free time—if
he ever has one—by going to the country’s beaches. “I
believe you haven’t really seen the Philippines unless you
see the beaches,” country manager John on the other hand
goes snorkeling and scuba diving when he has time.
Perks
ProV provides its employees with perks. According to Nair,
ProV has a good combination of work and play stressing that
quality of life is very important.
John then explained ProV’s HR initiative
called “Great place to work.” At the core of the initiative
is enhancing communication between management and employees.
It includes presentation of business opportunities, new
programs and policies, and encouraging overall interaction
with the whole team. Through online surveys management learn
what they can do better. It is important especially in
supporting employees who go offshore to know what their
employees need because the better equipped they are when
they go abroad, the better they will do with their work.
Free phones with postpaid lines and
financing assistance for gadgets like laptops are available
to ProV employees. At the end of the year loyal employees
are given freebies. For those who love to travel,
international assignments come easy, according to Ajit
because of high growth.
Bootcamp
Initiated back in the States, Bootcamp
has played a major role in ProV’s growth. Modified here, it
deals with the whole lifecycle of an IT project. It helps
newly hired employees integrate with the ProV family and
gives them a bird’s eye view of what to expect once they are
out there. Ajit explains that “we need people who can live
and work with us and go on international assignments. It’s
not all about technology. More than half of the skills
required are about dealing with customers from around the
globe. And we send a lot of people to other countries. Six
months into ProV and they start to go internationally. The
more they know the better.”
According to Killion, “The driver for the
bootcamp is to allow us to grow as fast as we want to grow.”
The bootcamp is an intensive 12-hours-a-day,
three-month-long training process where graduates from IT or
computer science programs are certified for certain
technologies and immersed in the ProV culture. To qualify,
they first go through a screening process. It is a
combination of HR type interviews, technical exams, and
psychometric tests. From around a hundred they are reduced
to the top 25.
While the goal is a 100-percent finishing
rate, not everyone gets through the bootcamp. But those who
did with flying colors usually get a significant position in
the company.
Giving back
The ProV family is growing fast. Soon
they will have to move to a new home. They are hoping that
by the end of the year, they would have moved to their
bigger office along McKinley at Fort Bonificaio.
Thankful for its unrelenting growth, ProV
is also active with its corporate social responsibility
activities. Just last year ProV donated a television set for
watching educational programs to a day care center showing
how the company places importance to education. Nair also
explained how hiring and training fresh graduates is giving
value back to the economy and ultimately the community.
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