Prism Holdings links IT with biz strategy

Actively involved in the corporate sector in Sri Lanka, Prism Group Holdings (Pvt.) Ltd. is a business strategy-focused ICT company operating in Asia Pacific which entered the Sri Lankan market just over a year back.

It has been highly successful in this short period of time, working with several key companies in the country. Chairman of the Group, Lankan-born Sanjeewa Balasuriya spoke about the company’s experiences and work in Sri Lanka in just a year – areas in which the IT industry needs to grow and current plans for the industry at large. Following are excerpts:

By Cassandra Mascarenhas



Q: How did you commence Prism?



A: We started off in 1995 in Melbourne where I grew up, where I started off with a retail computer business in Australia and then brought that up to the stage where it was more about corporate business consultancy services, IT strategy, focused organisation up to what it is today.

We really started expanding the business around 2005-2006, moving operations to Asia, starting with Malaysia, then Singapore where I set up a company called Prism and likewise with Vietnam which was the next country we moved into, again under the name Prism. Last year, after the war came to an end, we came to Sri Lanka, of course me being Sri Lankan born I was quite keen on this, and started Prism here.



Q: What does your business model comprise of?



A: What we do here today is IT enablement and our focus is basically on business although we are IT organisation, we don’t like to say it is just an IT organisation as it is more of a business focused organisation whereas we use IT strategies to enable business growth and business strategy.

We are different from other companies, especially in the context of the Sri Lankan market, in our outlook on things. You see, there are a lot of people who go into IT projects but in our language there is nothing called IT projects as such – we call them all business projects, where our focus is always from a business angle. So we look at an organisation’s business strategies, the goals of the organisation and of the stakeholders and all of that after which we take an approach to achieve those targets through different IT systems.

Basically we have 15 years of experience, expertise and exposure for multiple countries so we have a lot of experience behind the team as well apart from me.



Q: What does Prism have to offer to the Sri Lankan market?



A: When it comes to why we are here, it is basically because we see huge opportunity in the country after the end of the war, but we have noticed that the gap between the IT and business systems here are huge. IT departments here are in isolation all the time and the business people have no idea what their IT departments do. So IT here has basically become an expense or a cost.

What we are trying to do is fill this gap because when IT is properly utilised, it really supports the business strategy. We hope to identify these gaps – we go into these organisations as consultants – as we are currently doing with Lanka Hospitals and Lankaputhra Bank. Once we identify these gaps, we evaluate the company itself; for some of these companies it is not viable for them to have huge IT systems that are only utilised five percent of the time.

Prism also moves onto the management level, we go in and try and understand what the needs and challenges of the organisation are and then look at it from an IT point of view.

IT is also so integrated with human resources so we have really good expertise with human resources as a result and try to get the human resources to work with the IT department in an effective manner. One can put the best IT system in the world into an organisation but if the users are not polished up enough to use such a complex system it would be of no use which means it won’t create or sustain any competitive advantage.



Q: Could you give some examples of the work you have done with Sri Lankan companies so far?



A: We stay with the company for the duration of their life cycle basically and maintain their systems for them. Not every organisation needs major hardware and software to manage specific business applications for them. We offer these applications on a holistic platform which we call the cloud computing concept, the cloud basically delivers the technology and we were the very first company to come into post war Sri Lanka and set up mini data centres, one at Suntel the other at Sri Lanka telecom.

As I understand, Lanka Hospitals was the very first corporate organisation in the country to have managed e-mail systems which we offered to them, so basically without them having to buy $30,000-40,000 servers and managing them internally we do it for them.

What we provide is like electricity – when you switch on a switch your device powers up immediately, you do not think about where the electricity is coming from. So it’s the same concept, we have given Lanka Hospitals about 100 email boxes and we maintain it for them as well.

It’s very object driven – we allow the organisation to cut through the red tape and all avoid all the disadvantageous organisational effects on IT. The end result is that IT supports the business strategy; we also work with multiple departments and organisations around the world including KPMG and Pricewaterhouse Coopers but not here in Sri Lanka.



Q: How have your consultancy changes the way companies work here?



A: The best example I can give you is our work with Lanka Hospitals. When we went there a year back, more than half the people believed their e-mail didn’t work, they wouldn’t log in and check their mail. There were also many issues between the IT department and the users. Communication gap is another huge problem in Sri Lanka.

We are currently working with Lankaputhra Bank and have noticed that the gap between the banking systems and the IT systems is so huge and it’s dangerously negatively impacting the business goals and the outcomes they are looking to achieve.

Going back to the hospital, everybody now knows about the e-mail and usage is really high now which has had a positive impact on the internal functions of the organisation.



Q: What does Sri Lanka have to really move ahead in the IT sector in the future?



A: There is huge market potential here in Sri Lanka, the challenge for us comes in where we have to convince the traditional management that is deeply imbedded in the corporate culture to adapt more dynamic views of technology and business integration. There are also a very few organisations that are very pro-active and in the Government sector I see much less or no proactive stance at all. Some people know it needs to be done but nothing has so far happened.

Sri Lanka has a really good skill base and with good political stability it really needs to grow with the GDP, which is also increasing, and ride on the back of this development and really capitalise and use technology. Organisations such as the ICTA need to be far more proactive and really take across this message to the corporate sectors, to CEOs and CIOs.

– Pic by Upul Abayasekaraw