Big accounts do not necessarily make great business sense. Coming from TS Srinivasan, CEO of Octagon Computers, Consultancy and Services (or CSS as it is called), this statement makes sense. Srinivasan has built his business not by concentrating on one client or segment. Instead he has made inroads into defense, corporates, pharma and education sectors.

Srinivasan business motto is ‘clean transactions’, which encompasses doing business legally to balancing the interests of his various principals ethically to ensuring healthy margins for Octagon by putting the best practices to use.

SUCCESS THROUGH PHARMA
For a man who started his career with pharma marketing, Srinivasan has indeed come a long way. He attributes his success to the discipline he picked up during his 10-year tenure at Pfizer before he switched streams to take over as director of Parity Systems, a dealer for Wipro Infotech. The company was owned by his brother.

"My aim was to diversify and grow the business," he recalls. In the late 80s, when selling a 40MB hard disk was quite a task, he came up with the concept of value-added dealers who also provide support and service. The concept, which was backed by Wipro Infotech, is the mantra of the reseller market today. Underlining the importance of this approach, Srinivasan says, "The last few years have been tough and services helped resellers survive."

Srinivasan also realized that single vendor relationships would limit his business prospects. He decided to spin off Octogon in 1997, from Parity, which was a dedicated Wipro partner.

"My pharma background taught me that training on new products is the order of the day. This prepared me for the world of technology, of new products and their upgrades," he explains his decision. Octagon currently represents brands like HP, IBM, Acer, Toshiba, Microsoft, TVSE with his team of four providing technical support as well.

GETTING HIS STRATEGIES IN PLACE
Srinivasan implements his 3R policy—response, resolution and responsibility—to all his dealings, be it customers, principals or employees. This policy is what has endeared him to his 500 customers whose service expectations are adequately met. The reason Srinivasan is focusing on these aspects of business it to do justice to all his relationships and retain his customer and principals.

"There was a time when we focused on high price and low volumes. Today with high volumes at low price, the situation is tougher, especially with vendors entering the market directly," he adds. Only a professionally managed enterprise with good relationships can get an edge over other resellers. Knowing this, Srinivasan has taken a consultative approach with his existing client base, which generate 80% of this new business.

EXPANDING BUSINESS
The topline growth that Octagon experienced has not reflected adequately in bottomline growth. This induced Srinivasan to cut costs in 2003 and prune his team from 30 to four. "I am not a believer in run rates," says Srinivasan, emphasizing that he prefers to please the customer than the principal.

Satisfied with one good project a month, Srinivasan has enlarged his focus to include new verticals in 2004-05. "We are tapping the e-learning market and are in the process of collaborating with a Hyderabad-based e-learning software company to bundle and push a complete solution in the market," he informs.

Storage is yet another area that Octagon is planning to get aggressive in. Ride on the bright forecast about IT-spending from SME and corporates, he is aiming at a turnover of Rs 5 crore in 2003-04.

NANDITA DAS (CYBERMEDIA NEWS SERVICE)

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