This business plan refers to the delivery of specialised technical training sessions and soft skills training sessions by Infosys Technologies Limited, who is an expert in this domain, in Mauritius. Infosys Technologies Limited is a small software development company in Mauritius of around 30 employees but globally, it has reached the 100 000 mark.
In Mauritius, mostly Infosys internal non-billable projects and 2 billable client projects are currently being executed. 1. The project 1. 1 From idea to business opportunity Infosys Technologies Limited has all the skills and expertise in giving training on technical/soft skills.
It has its own Education & Research Department in Mysore that is fully active and has its set of highly skilled lecturers. Training via video conferencing are often organised internally in Infosys Technologies Limited and trainers come to Mauritius on a regular basis. Thus, this could be extended to the external world in Mauritius and later African region too. This will also increase the profitability of the Mauritius DC. This would involve giving training on technical/soft skills to mainly university leavers, IT professionals and employees of IT companies.
IT companies could use this as outsourcing facility to provide their employees with training rather than delivering the training internally. Training packages on technical subjects like EJB, Struts, ERP packages - PeopleSoft, SAP/ABAP, DOTNET at different levels and training on soft skills like Leadership skills, Communication skills, Assertiveness skills are either available at very basis level or not available at all in Mauritius. Currently, if such training sessions are available, it is only internally to a limited set of employees within their respective organisations.Also, many IT companies normally send their employees abroad for the training sessions, thus increasing their budget for training. This indicates that only a limited number of persons working in these companies normally have access to these training sessions. Also, unless a university leaver or an IT professional does not work on a particular technology in his workplace currently, he does have the possibility to take training and learn about any other technical domain, eg, SAP/ABAP, thus restricting his exposure in the field of work.
1. 2 The Entrepreneur - The teamInfosys has all the skills and expertise in giving training on technical/soft skills. It has its own Education & Research (E&R) Department and Leadership Institute in Mysore that are fully active, recognised worldwide and have their set of highly skilled team, including trainers, organisers and facilities personnel. Training via video conferencing are often currently organised internally in Infosys and trainers come to Mauritius on a regular basis for such training sessions/workshops.
The team for this business plan will be consisting of:1. E&R training organiser - scheduling of training sessions for the different groups and skill sets, to arrange for the availability and booking of the training rooms, trainers and video conferencing equipment 2. E&R trainers - delivering the training sessions/workshops and working on R&D 3. Finance person - for cost and profit management for the training sessions/workshops and preparing financial statements 4.
Facilities person - to ensure that the training rooms and video conferencing equipment are in working condition.Sales & Marketing person - to devise the marketing strategies for the training sessions/workshops that will be delivered by Infosys and build contacts in Mauritius for this purpose The core skill sets of the team members will be retained as same as the existing success team in India. They will be slightly adapted to suit the Mauritian context and culture, wherever required. The training centre of technical software development sessions/soft skills workshops would be unique in kind.Also, the highly experienced staff, the high-tech equipment, the training facilities, the Infosys brand name and excellent reputation in training will be used as differentiating factors as compared to the competitors.
Moreover, such training sessions are not currently available to university leavers and IT professionals, thus this would be a very good opportunity. Skimming pricing strategy The costs of introducing the product to the market via promotion, advertising will be high. In such cases, the practice of price-skimming will allow for some return on the set-up costs.By charging high prices initially, a company will build and maintain its high-quality image for its product. Also, charging initial high prices allows the firm the luxury of reducing them when the threat of competition arrives. Skimming can also be an effective strategy in segmenting the market, for example, university leavers, IT professionals, IT companies.
A firm can divide the market into a number of segments and reduce the price at different stages in each, thus acquiring maximum profit from each segment.This will be fully inline with Infosys high-profile image in the IT industry as well as its excellent reputation in the area of training and development. 4. Operations Plan 4. 1 Localisation Training centre Situated in the cyber city which is in the centre of island. This location will be ideal since more & more software development/BPO companies are currently shifting or opening their offices currently in this area.
Moreover, there are lots of prospects that more companies are planning to do so in the future, inline with the country's vision of becoming a cyber island.Operating facilities ; equipment The following will be obtained from Mysore Development Centre (DC). -Video conferencing equipment -Training materials Currently, the development centre already has 2 training rooms for batches of 15-20 persons, fully equipped with computers but only one room having the video conferencing equipment. Installing the same in the second training room will be easy since extra video conferencing equipment is available in Mysore DC.
All the training materials are available as soft copy, thus reducing use of paper.All the assessments and exams will be done online from exam servers that are already in place in Mysore. Once a participant/group of participants has a training request, they will need to contact the E;R organiser. The latter will schedule for the training as required as well as arrange for the booking of the training rooms and trainers for the training session. The finance person will be responsible for ensuring that the payment is done accordingly.
As far as possible, video conferencing will be used as media with trainers from Mysore DC.On a regular basis for specific workshops, trainers will be brought from Mysore DC for the training depending upon the needs. 4. 3 Quality Control procedures For quality control and to ensure that the trainee needs are being met, if not exceeded, at the end of each training session/workshop, each trainee will be given feedback forms on the trainer and training content so that the level of customer satisfaction can be improved. 4. 4 Timing of operations There can be 4 training sessions per day, 2 sessions per training room.
Duration of each session will vary from 2-3 hours and one will be held in the morning as from 9am and the other in the afternoon as from 2pm. 4. 5 Legal aspects - Licences/Authorisations etc. License will be required from MQA, required for accreditation of all training centres in Mauritius. 5. 0 Human Resource Plan 5.
1 HR Needs analysis For the training centre, the following persons will be required: -Training centre In-charge: This role will be taken by the DC In-charge himself-Facilities person: This role will be added to the current facilities person in the DC -Finance person: This role will be added to the current finance person in the DC -Trainers: They will be delivering courses from Mysore or when they travel to Mauritius. But they will have to be trained to learn about the Mauritian culture and context. Moreover, developing the French speaking capabilities of the trainers will be a must. Trainers would be delivering courses based on their domain of expertise.
-E;R training organiser: This person will have to be recruited and trained by organisers from Mysore -Sales ; Marketing person: This person will have to be recruited to devise the marketing strategies for the training sessions/workshops that will be delivered by Infosys and build contacts in Mauritius for this purpose, with the help of the existing Sales and Marketing team of Infosys. HR Policies - R ; S, T ; D etc. Recruitment ; Selection Recruitment Advertising: The company will place adverts as vacancies or new posts arise.This will either be individual adverts for specific posts or composite adverts for instance in the local press.
Shortlisting: will be conducted with fair and objective judgement. The shortlist must be compiled in conjunction with the employee specification. Interviewing: This will be done at 2 stages: by DC cum Training centre in-charge and the HR representative from Infosys HR team. Each candidate will be assessed against the job description and person specification. The interview panel will provide written documentation of the reasons behind their decisions.
