AVI-SPL has set up its operation in India and made an appointment to lead the efforts on the ground. The global integrator shares its plans for the market and how India fits into AVI-SPL’s journey forward.
Demand drives expansion. Mandy Scheller, director of global deployment, talks about how this was true for AVI-SPL’s move into India: “With the current global climate, we’re seeing an increased demand from our global enterprise customers wanting to deploy global solutions. This is true more so right now because of the emerging ‘hybrid workplace’. They’re looking for a partner that will be able to work with them globally and that is the main reason for us looking to expand, to meet the demands of the customers wanting to work with AVI-SPL.”
Why India? Tim Riek, executive vice president, technology and services at AVI-SPL, explains: “For the past four years, AVI-SPL has hosted a customer advisory board that comprises a number of our multinational and global enterprise customers. Through our engagement with this customer advisory board, we’re constantly soliciting information and feedback about what else we could be doing and where we could be doing it? Consistently, the feedback we have received from them was to get more engaged in APAC. And as we have increased engagement in APAC [AVI-SPL has offices in Singapore and Hong Kong], the response from them has been to specifically get more engaged in India.”
AVI-SPL‘s focus on global delivery means that it isn’t stepping into India without work as Riek details: “We’ve already got some existing service engagements for India and ultimately, we will be looking to transfer these over to our India operation. We have a couple of recent global deals that we have been awarded that required and demanded greater presence in India. So, we’re not stepping into India wondering who our first customer is going to be. A lot of groundwork has been laid and revenue streams have already been established.”
Mala Prasad, regional director at AVI-SPL, has been appointed to lead the integrator’s efforts on the ground in India. She lays out her mission: “AVI-SPL brings with it superior design capability, superior service delivery and there is that consistent level of experience with delivery that AVI-SPL is known for. It is my job to translate that to the Indian market. This means building a team here which can emulate the global service offering that we have, and our customers are used to whether it be US, Canada, APAC or globally. I hope to bring the same level of quality to the enterprise accounts we develop in India.”
Regarding the immediate challenges of establishing and growing an operation, Riek says: “We’ll obviously be building our delivery capabilities in India to efficiently deliver for our customers. But equally important for us will be to leverage the resources we already have in the US and globally. For us it will be a balancing act. We don’t want the experience to be entirely different for our clients every time they engage with us across the world. We want people who come to AVI-SPL to understand that there will be consistency in how you are served and what the delivery experience will be. But of course, there is regional variance that needs to be taken into consideration and we’ll have to find that balance.”
Interestingly, AVI-SPL’s plans for its Indian operation do not just end at project delivery. Client support is another aspect and Riek says: “AVI-SPL has as a mature global delivery of managed services. So, being able to leverage India, as another platform for expanding our global service operating centre footprint is also compelling to us. In addition to being able to serve the local market more effectively from India, being able to continue to scale our global managed services platform is also something that is a particular interest for us as we go into the region. Again, the focus in not only on how do we better serve customers in the region, but also how do we better serve customers globally.”
AVI-SPL has global service operating centres in the US, UK and Germany. Riek details the plans for India: “We’re looking to put remote team members in India, who would help us deliver remote managed services to our customers. These can range anywhere from what we classify as level zero or level one support, such as troubleshooting or customer service, to more sophisticated, level two and level three support which includes engineering services and all of that would potentially be delivered from India.”