Meeting Evolving SME IT Industries' Needs by Responsive Engagements

Chinmoy Panda

President & CEO, Mindfire Solutions

Chinmoy Panda, the President and CEO of Mindfire Solutions has had several years of experience ... more>>

Mindfire Solutions is a software services provider catering to the needs of global small and medium businesses over the last 12 years. With over 750 employees working from 3 development centers in India, Mindfire has clients in all parts of the globe across US, UK, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Middle East, South Africa ,Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and others. Particularly interesting to note is Mindfire’s ability to work with new, cutting edge technologies, frameworks and deep expertise in diverse industry domains which enable serving customer needs ranging from enterprise application development, e-commerce to design, database management and software testing.

A fledgling small and medium business market segment a decade or so back has now transformed into a multibillion dollar segment – clearly re-confirms what we have consistently believed in from the beginning. As the application development rate in the fortune companies league plateaus, SME comes forward as an attractive proposition, driven by its need to keep lean operations and aspiration to ride on operational efficiency...hence IT.

Working with small and medium businesses has its own set of lucrative advantages and uphill challenges. And the entire organization machinery has to be greased unidirectional to cope with the scale of things which happen. Companies who serve large businesses/accounts have major revenues coming from minor number of clients while for us it is just the reverse. Contrary to our peers who may actually get surprised knowing that currently we are working with 250+ clients, we understand that being accountable for each of these clients at the same time is but of course challenging.

We have our share of joy when our people feel secure in recessions as our revenue risk is shared across a large client base. Hence we are proud to share that we did not have any layoffs, any temporary business shutdowns because of the slower market growth rate globally. We take pride that we serve SMEs and that is how we envision ourselves over the coming years as that is what we are best at.

The surest sign of evolution in an industry is observed over time and the same is the case with the SME sector as well. As more businesses start getting funded from angelfunds or self, greater competition is observed within this category for getting to market quicker on a leaner development budget. Not to mention the need to frequently and quickly alter the business requirements to suit the evolving needs of the users. And thus along with evolves the services which cater to SMEs. Agility, responsive communication, price-sensitivity and hard timelines are characteristic of SME expectations.

At the core, everyone of us at Mindfire have been working with customers from diverse geographies over a large period of time. We understand that it is not just about the right code or the right test case or the right documentation standards. We do realize the importance of responding to emails at the right time, scheduling regular milestones during the project lifecycle even if the client believes it as an overhead and believing that upstarts and SMEs are meant to be flexible and that means requirements will keep changing. And hence we have endeavored over the years to bring this flexibility within our organization. Today where we stand, our processes, people and systems are all aligned towards the only goal of delighting SMEs, whatever it takes. And that is what propels us forward.

We welcome you to drop us a line if you would like to know us better.

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