By Jenalyn Rubio
Published in the May 2008 print edition of Computerworld Philippines
July 04, 2008   

For any business to be able to compete these days, having at least the simplest IT system in place is necessary. But what if your business revolves around IT, is about IT, and depends on IT? At IT Group Inc., IT is the business—such that investments on technology no longer have to be justified and a formal IT department is somehow unnecessary because almost everyone knows how to maintain the company's IT systems.

According to Jan Alvin Pabellon, vice president for business development at IT Group, being an IT company has its advantages since they use their own people to look after their infrastructure. Pabellon says their usual IT expenditures are on hardware refresh and operational maintenance, except when they are working on particular IT projects that require new investments. Since the company uses mostly open source systems for its internal systems and the proprietary software they use in their other lines of business are provided by their partners, they have no problems in terms of software licenses, Pabellon says.

In IT
IT Group Inc. is an IT solutions provider servicing mainly small- to mid-sized organizations and offers four lines of business—systems integration and consulting, product reselling, managed services/outsourcing, and training.

Describing the company's current infrastructure, Pabellon says they have an application server for their customer and project database; a server for network management and connectivity; a file server for file sharing; a development or staging server for in-house development; and a telephony server. Almost all employees are equipped with laptop computers because most employees have to be outside the office with clients for the most part of the week. “That also means that our systems and applications should be available offsite; so our applications are Web-based,” explains Pabellon.

Early last year, the company decided to invest on IP (Internet Protocol) telephony using the open source PBX (private branch exchange) and telephony platform, Asterisk. Pabellon shares that they used to have the normal key telephony system where five or more people would share one phone line but after they implemented VoIP, all of them now have softphones. Today, as long as an employee is connected to the local area network (LAN) or to the Internet, he can accept and make calls, making it easier and faster for him to address customer concerns. “Using IT as a tool for collaboration and communication is very important for us because we are involved in knowledge work; and our people should always be online, emails should always be accessible, etc.,” he adds.

Needless to say, technological investments are vital to the efficient operation and success of IT Group's business. “It's really a big help, like when we deployed our CRM (customer relationship management) and IP-PBX system. Before, when a customer calls, we did everything manually and we just use (Microsoft) Excel (to keep track of calls); but now when somebody calls in, it's logged, the customer is given a ticket number, we reply to the customer with the ticket number then we have a reporting system to know which cases are still open or unaddressed,” Pabellon explains, adding that through this system, they are able to ensure that they meet their customers' needs quickly and satisfactorily. According to Pabellon, they deployed CRM software from SugarCRM in 2006. SugarCRM is a commercial open source software provider which happens to be a partner of IT Group as well.

IT Group also actively uses the Web to sell and market their business through search engine optimization and e-mail marketing. “For example, in our training business, email and Web site marketing is a big help to us because through our email, our customer would know our training schedule, then by visiting our Web site, he could easily sign up for, say, a Linux training course,” Pabellon explains. He adds that they usually segment their customers through their databases and do customer paneling—for example, by industry—and use the system for studying how best to target potential clients.

Meanwhile, through search engine optimization, IT Group encourages and improves traffic to their Web site which ultimately results in sales leads. “We don't have just one Web site; what we do is we optimize our site and make it 'search-engine friendly' such that when people type certain keywords while looking for services related to our line of business, our name will appear. This is because we realize that people nowadays sort of just 'google' everything when they need anything,” he further explains.

Through IT
In the future, Pabellon says that most of the company’s IT investments would be more on hardware refresh since their current systems are still robust and scalable enough to support their growth. However, one big investment that the company has embarked on recently is the payment gateway which would eventually be linked to their growing training business. With the payment gateway, customers would have the option to pay using their credit cards. “We already paid the payment gateway so it's just a matter of updating our Web site to enable such transactions, we hope to get this done within the year,” says Pabellon, adding that they also want to be able to link this payment gateway with their hosting services in the future but he says it may take some time before they extend this cashless payment option to their other services because many client companies still prefer to pay through checks.

Pabellon further shares that they are also looking at expanding their storage infrastructure, particularly for backup because the type of data being stored nowadays go beyond the usual documents, and now also include images, videos, and other multimedia formats. He adds that they are looking for ways to integrate different systems together and make sure data are available for access and collaboration.

Although most of their clients right now consist of local companies, Pabellon says they have a few clients from other countries—but they want to further expand their client base and go regional. “We are joining trade groups like the Philippine Software Industry Association (PSIA) to prepare for this; but infrastructure-wise, I believe we are ready, especially since we outsource our data center, so it will not be that difficult,” he says. He adds that they have also constantly been sending their people abroad for training and networking.

Aside from these preparations, an important component of their growth strategy is attracting and retaining IT talent especially since IT Group is largely an IT services business, says Pabellon. “I think our turnover is less than most companies because we try to develop a 'culture' within the company—we try to offer little incentives like subsidized laptops, trainings,” he says.

Another program the company has to attract talent, particularly for their training business, is they offer Linux certification and training for free in exchange for an agreement to be a trainer after he gets certified. “Our training business is actually growing and what we do is, say you are a Linux expert and you are looking for certification—which is usually expensive, if you join us we get you trained and certified for free but you have to teach for us for at least a year,” Pabellon explains.