IT Life: Getting Inventive

Tell us about your company, how long have you been in IT and what are your areas of expertise?

Invenio Business Solutions is a specialised business solutions consultancy working across a number of industries. We provide our customers with transformational and run-support work using SAP technologies and other integration tools. Our tax and revenue management systems for central government help maximise tax collection and reduce evasion and fraud management for public sector clients. We help customers in manufacturing reduce operating costs and we work in all areas of media like music and television, helping clients maximise their revenues and reduce costs. Invenio is a global business with 11 offices worldwide and we feel that transparency, building strong customer relationships and offering good value for money is essential.

I have personally been in IT for the last 30 years, working for the likes of IBM, Siemens and Tata.

What motivates you right now?

Winning customers and delivering value to them to help them grow is an exciting business to be involved in and it continues to motivate us every day. Because of this drive, we have won a number of awards for growth, quality and business success and have been included in the Sunday Times Tech Track for the last three years running. We want to continue to be recognised for delivering great customer service across our extensive client portfolio.

What has been your favourite project so far?

We’ve been involved in a lot of exciting projects, so choosing one is difficult. Something I’m really proud of is an SAP based procurement portal we developed from scratch. This portal is for the media industry and we deployed it to 130,000 global suppliers. Deploying it in an integrated manner with SAP finance systems with full internal controls was a great achievement. This has delivered great value to customers every day, increasing efficiency and saving them a great deal of money.

What tech were you involved with ten years ago?

I’ve been working with business systems for well over ten years and have seen many major developments. The expansion of software capabilities, social media integration and customer facing portals has pushed the industry miles ahead of where it was a decade ago.

What tech do you expect to be using in ten years’ time?

I believe IT will become a lot more social and the difference between personal and professional use of devices will evaporate. No one will carry two mobile phones and laptops will disappear, with more people using tablets and mobile devices. We should be able to work from anywhere and the concept of offices will change for good.

Who’s your tech hero?

Bill Gates, especially because of the way he uses his personal wealth for philanthropy.

Who’s your tech villain?

It’s difficult to name one. But the overall level of piracy that has increased with developments in technology is continuing to damage the content based media industry.

What’s your favourite technology ever made? Which do you use most?

My Macbook Air. I absolutely love it.

What’s the greatest challenge for an IT company/department today?

The biggest challenge for IT departments is to understand what their roles and responsibilities are within the wider business. IT will only survive if it is able to support the business as a whole.

Apart from your own, which company do you admire the most and why?

There are a lot of great IT companies around, from start-ups to multinationals. I really admire Google, they have completely transformed our lives in the last 10 years. Now everyone knows everything!

To Cloud or not to Cloud?

Cloud. The human cost of not using cloud will slowly kill on-premise IT infrastructure. Only the biggest companies will have the choice of not using cloud in a few years.

What did you want to be when you were a child?

I wanted to be a doctor, but I was not a good enough student for that!

Partho Bhattacharya is MD and President of Invenio Solutions

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