The Interconnected Branch Network

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Being a leader in its industry Navantis has many "strengths" which as a business organization, it has wielded to capitalize on opportunities presented by the external environment. Some of the outstanding strengths of the organization are given below.

Strong Financial State

Navantis is an organization which has strict policies against taking financial support from any banks or lenders, be it local or foreign. From its initiation in 2006, the company has been profitable & thus currently holds strong capital in company accounts, both local & foreign.

Navantis being a company that earns in Canadian Dollars receives a slight benefit when converting its earnings to Sri Lankan Rupees due to the current exchange rates.

This Company also contributes to the country’s economy as a business organization that earns foreign currency.

The Limitation of Tangible Assets Owned by Navantis

To be frank, Navantis owns its employees, the knowledge stack & the technology stack; everything else is rented. The organization is heavily focused on its human resources & has many policies that benefit & uplift its employees. All other physical entities owned by the company are rented. This makes the organization more adaptable, resistant to changes in the external environment.

Highly Reputed & Recognized in the Industry

Navantis is known as the leading developer of Microsoft based IT Solutions in Sri Lanka & is highly regarded in Canada as well. Navantis is one of Microsoft’s Gold Partners in business & is recognized as an organization proficient in Microsoft technologies, internationally.

Navantis was placed 14th in the Microsoft Tech Competency Level Survey (2012) in Canada. The organization is also well recognized for various industry related awards it has received over the past 2 to 4 years. Finally, the organization is also well known for its innovative IT solutions; GreenMeeting, IShare, FastLane etc.

Highly Experienced & Skilful Workforce

Navantis is an organization that focuses heavily on the quality & standards of its employees. The company has various policies in place to maintain high standards of employees.

Maximum age of a potential employee with no prior experience is 26 years

Employees are made permanent only after graduating & acquiring a relevant degree

An employee receives an annual performance agreement that contains career & knowledge targets that an employee should achieve by the end of the year

Acquire Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 certification by end of Q3

The number of bugs inserted per 1000 lines of code should be less than 15

Employees are given extensive training using local & foreign (mainly Canadian) sources. Overseas training programs are also common at Navantis, where occasionally the training will be conducted directly by Microsoft Canada.

Interconnected Branch Network

Navantis being a Canadian based organization has its main branch in Calgary, Canada. The organization consists of three more branches; two in Canada (Pape& Randolf) & one in Sri Lanka. The branch in Pape, Canada is the company’s main data centre where all business related data is stored. This network of branches helps the organization manage its various projects & helps it to target a wider client pool.

Furthermore, the secure & reliable data centre in Pape, Canada manages all the source codes of all projects. All the other three branches are connected directly to this data centre where the latter acts as a virtual environment for resources (employees) from all branches to work on a single project; a project team can be formed by employees in Canada as well as in Sri Lanka.

Powerful & Reputed Clients

Well recognized & established clients of the organization are a huge strength to the organization’s business in terms of new projects, reputation & credibility. Navantis has many reputable clients overseas & in the local industry as well.

Hatton National Bank (Local)

Brandix (Local)

Honda (Foreign)

Microsoft (Foreign)

Direct Energy (Foreign)

University Health Network (Foreign)

Innovative, Strong Methods of Marketing

Navantis approaches customers in a different manner altogether. Although advertising is not that significant in the industry, the organization tries to get up-front & personal with their potential clients. For example, Navantis sponsors golf tournaments in Canada which many organization heads participate in. They use this as an opportunity to plant an idea in a person when he/she is relaxed & enjoying themselves than when they are stressed out at the work place.

Navantis also engages in bidding for projects & often proposes various business solutions to potential clients, which they can utilize to improve & add value to their businesses.

Innovative Business Solutions

The organization has come up with a number of innovative solutions for groups of clients during the past 4 years. These solutions guarantee good returns & gain the organization a competitive edge over all other organizations in the industry, until a substitute solution is developed. Some of these are given below.

GreenMeeting – This software is built on top of Microsoft’s Lync conferencing system. This helps to calculate how much energy you save by using this system rather than travelling to a given location, just to participate in a meeting.

IShare – This software is a mobile app used to take & upload photographs of criminal activities while they are being committed. This is currently used by the Canadian Police Department.

Election Management System – This is a unique system used to manage all election related data & is currently being used by the Ontario province in Canada.

FastLane – This system is used to pass claims & compensations of employees who usually work onsite (outside office premises)

Utilization of Advance Technologies & Systems

Navantis specializes in Microsoft technologies & obviously uses bleeding-edge Microsoft technologies within the organization. Almost all processes within the organization are integrated with Information Systems. These integration points have increased the quality & efficiency of the business processes of Navantis. Further details on the ISs & the impact of these systems will be discussed under the "Information Systems at Navantis" section. Some examples for these systems are given below.

Customized version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2012

ChangePoint

Weaknesses of Navantis

Like any business organization, Navantis has its own weaknesses or points where the organization can improve.

Possible Points of Improvement

Navantis is currently a CMMI Level 3 company & they believe that they will be at a disadvantage if they do not improve on that. Furthermore the organization is focused on improving their agile development methodologies. Navantis’s proficiency in Agile Development can be challenged mainly because the organization has not yet completely moved into an agile development process & lacks vital knowledge & experience with this regard.

The Scarcity of Experts

Most employees of Navantis are very skilful in general but most of the projects currently running within the organization lack experts (MCITP, MCTS, MCPD, MCSE, etc.). The organization almost always runs below the required number of experts. This is a significant weakness of the organization & exhausts existing experts & other employees of the company.

High Reliance on Microsoft

The organization as a whole would be devastated if it loses the partnership with Microsoft due to its high interdependency on the latter. Since Navantis is practically based on Microsoft technologies, the tiniest crack in this partnership will cause huge problems to Navantis.

Business Strategies of Navantis

A business strategy is relevant to a particular business unit (a single section of business of a large organization) of an organization and states how that organization should engage or compete in that business. These strategies will usually have revenue and profit goals and will be concerned about the following.

How advantages could be achieved over competitors

What new opportunities can be seized

What -products should be developed or what services should be offered

Growth and Expansion

The Idea

Growth is an essential part of any business organizations & can be categorized in terms of product growth, geographical growth or expansion & functional growth.

Product growth refers to the number of or types of products an organization produces. When it comes to the Computer Industry, this can mean the various types of business solutions that an organization develops.

Functional growth is basically increasing the number of industries the organization is currently into. For example a supplier can decide to start manufacturing a product previously manufactured by its customer.

Geographical growth is the expansion of the organization to other regions, states, districts, countries etc.

Product Growth and Geographical Expansion at Navantis

Navantis having three branches in Canada (Pape, Calgary and Randolph) & one in Sri Lanka is not necessarily planning to branch out any further at the moment. Navantis handles many projects from countries like Malaysia, Australia & Dubai. If required Navantis rents a temporary location to put-up shop in that particular country until the project is complete. Although located in Canada and Sri Lanka, Navantis is fully engaged in projects and opportunities around the globe through its partners and resources. The ability of Navantis to set-up shop in various locations depending on the needs of their clients is remarkable.

Navantis is not very interested in deviating from their usual client based business solutions projects. They did actually get into producing some off-the-shelf products in 2008 (as given in the previous section) but now they are once again focused solely on client based projects.

Shared Services and Cost Reduction

The Idea

This is one of the most well understood aspects of any business but is one of the most difficult objectives to achieve in the required & expected manner. The basic idea here is to develop a reasonable solution that costs less than the competitor’s solution, with comparable features & technologies that would ensure client satisfaction.

Achieving economies of scale helps an organization cut down on the costs. This is the process of utilizing automation & specialization together with experience to effectively & efficiently develop a solution.

Likewise, achieving economies of scope will help an organization to produce or do more using the same amount of resources, which will in turn bring down their overall costs. An organization can go about achieving this by reducing resource wastage, managing proper schedules, reusing same infrastructure for different operations & considering additional operations.

Generalists and Reduced Development Cost at Navantis

Navantis has taken cost reduction into serious consideration & strived towards achieving it. Since its initiation in October, 2004 Navantis has gained invaluable experience in developing business solutions using Microsoft technologies. Since Navantis focuses solely on Microsoft tools & frameworks they are recognized as specialists in the development of business solutions based on Microsoft technologies. The organization also makes use of advanced Information Systems to control & manage their processes while focusing heavily on automation procedures. These factors play a major role at Navantis in supporting the organization to achieve economies of scale.

Most Navantis employees are considered as generalists rather than specialists. This is well observed in the Quality Assurance division where for example, the QA team offers many services like Business Analysis, Project Management, Project Coordination, Requirements Elicitation etc. to the organization including general QA services. This reuse of human resources has helped the organization to drastically reduce expenses. This is a prime example on how Navantis has achieved economies of scope within their organization.

Functional Strategies of Navantis

Product and Service Differentiation

The Idea

This is the concept of creating a difference between an organization’s products & its competitors’, in the eyes of the customer. It’s easier to attract more customers to your product if customers can easily distinguish your product from the others, considering a positive characteristic in the product.

Product Differentiation at Navantis

Navantis has been using the Microsoft technology stack to develop business solutions since its initiation in Oct, 2004. Navantis being a Gold Partner of Microsoft itself shows the expertise it has acquired on MS technologies. Furthermore, Navantis is one of the very first companies to get their hands on the latest cutting edge MS technologies. They evaluate study & use these technologies to develop high-end business solutions before even their competitors have gone through the documentation.

Navantis also has a separate division (Customer Support Services) to handle client inquiries & after sales services like maintenance. These specialists handle all maintenance tasks, training requests & change requests (after successful deployment). This division guarantees a unique service & immediate response to all client requests. The CCS personnel at Navantis are recognized for their professional etiquette & courtesy throughout the industry.

Navantis business solutions are high in quality & have very strong support services because most of the underlying technologies are pre-tested & supported worldwide (e.g. MS SharePoint 2010) by Microsoft. Navantis has employed various Information Systems like Microsoft CRM & Microsoft TFS to increase the efficiency & quality of the organization’s processes & products respectively. This quality & expertise shows distinctively from their initial project proposal to the final, developed product.

These characteristics of their products & the after sales services they offer have created a high level of product differentiation within the industry, for Navantis business solutions.

Effective and Timely Responses

The Idea

Timely responses can gain any organization a competitive advantage in its industry. Making sure that the business processes in the organization adapt quickly to environmental changes is crucial to success.

In the Computer Industry, timely delivery of a business solution & managing the change requests of the client play a key role in success. Client satisfaction is the most important aspect & greatly relies on the timely responses of the organization.

Furthermore, offering something unique at the right time can help attract new clients & greatly strengthen the organization’s position in the industry.

Timely Responses at Navantis

Navantis being a leading organization in the Computer Industry has a solid process to handle changes in the environment & cope with constant client change requests.

Navantis has a separate CSS (Customer Support Services) division to handle all client inquires, change requests & training requests.

Furthermore, the organization gets the clients involved in the actual project management & testing processes using sophisticated Information Systems such as Microsoft Customer Relationship Management System. These systems help track & manage client requests & create client satisfaction early on in the development stages of a project.

Standalone Strategies of Navantis

Introduction of Innovative Products

The idea

Actually the idea here is quite simple; develop something unique, something no organization has developed before & something that can be marketed. There are two basic types of innovations that an organization can pursue.

Product Innovation - Develop a unique new product or add innovative features to an existing product

Process Innovation - Implement a revolutionised process that would increase the quality of the products & increase the efficiency of the organization

Innovation at Navantis

It is very difficult for an organization developing business solutions on client requirements to develop something innovative. This is mainly due to the high risk of client rejection; the client might not be pleased with an innovative add-in to the system & might request it to be removed or worse, reject the entire solution. Nonetheless Navantis always strives to add some innovative features to their solutions with the clients’ main requirements in mind.

During the recession period in 2008 Navantis was running on a very few projects. As a resolution for the problem they moved out of developing custom business solutions & moved into developing off-the-shelf software for a group of potential customers. These products were innovative at that time & the organization managed to stay afloat during the recession period using this strategy. A few such products & a brief description on each are given below.

Green Meeting – This software is built on top of Microsoft’s Lync conferencing system. While using this to conduct a meeting it calculates how much energy (carbon foot-print) you save by using this system rather than travelling to a given location, just to participate in a meeting.

I Share – This software is a mobile app used to take & upload photographs of criminal activities to a secure, centralized database by witnesses. This is currently being used by the Canadian Police Department.

Election Management System – This system is used to manage all election related data & is currently being used in the Ontario province in Canada.

Fast Lane – This is an online system used to pass claims & compensations of employees who usually work on-site & rarely come into office premises

Now Navantis has moved back into handling client based projects rather than off-the-shelf type products.

Partners and Alliance

The Idea

Alliances or partnerships can decide if an organization survives or if it falls. Alliances with other organization or groups can be very beneficial but can also limit the opportunities of an organization. Nonetheless partnerships are crucial strategies implemented by organizations to attain their goals in the long run. Some of the benefits of a good alliance are given below.

Improved financial support

Improved credibility

Strong presence in the industry

Shared responsibilities

Shared decision making

Alliances at Navantis

Navantis is an organization that believes in strong partnerships & alliances. Navantis focused heavily on making and maintaining reliable and strong partnerships during the recession period of 2008. Currently Navantis has a strong group of partners out of which Microsoft Corporation is the most prominent. The business partners of Navantis Inc. are given below.

Microsoft Corporation

AvePoint

K2

Dolphin

BA Insight

Compuware

ADAPX

Nintex

There are many advantages that Navantis gains in having strong partners in business. Some of the most noticeable are given below.

Navantis gets their hands on bleeding edge technology (from Microsoft Corporation) before many others which gives them a chance to evaluate & study these technologies better & earlier than others.

Navantis is well recognized & trusted as a partner of one of the most prominent organizations (Microsoft Corporation) in the industry

Constant exchange of industry specific knowledge among partners helps to stay in front of other organizations & groups