"We have been constantly upgrading our portfolio of solutions and skills to keep up with the fast changing digital world"

Being a trusted Solutions partner of leading IT OEMs, Galaxy Office Automation is leveraging their portfolio of solutions to keep up with the fast-changing digital world. In a chat with VARINDIA, Sanjay Patodia, CEO of Galaxy Office Automation Pvt. Ltd. shares his experience to drive the business growth, the digital transformation journey, customer trends etc.

Brief about the company

Galaxy has been in the IT Systems integration business for 3 decades and has over 200 technology professionals with support across major cities in India. Galaxy is a trusted Solutions partner of leading IT OEMs and currently services 1000+ active customers. Galaxy has grown organically with >30% CAGR in the last 3 years and has clocked a revenue of about $90 million in FY 2020-21.

As CEO of Galaxy Office Automation, my role carries the overall responsibility for ensuring Galaxy remains deeply relevant for its clients and bringing technology closer to their business strategies and operations. My focus has always been to build a purpose-led, performance-driven, and profitable business.

What kind of services and solutions are provided? What are the key verticals and drivers for business growth?
We have been constantly upgrading our portfolio of solutions and skills to keep up with the fast-changing digital world. Our vast experience across various industries, large investments in developing skills and solutions, ability to execute complex transactions and sound financials, puts us in the best position to deliver transformational solutions to our clients. 

Galaxy offers cutting-edge IT solutions in Data Center, Hybrid Cloud, Networking, Cyber Security & Mobility. Our growth has come from implementing large complex IT Solutions across multiple verticals such as BFSI, Auto manufacturing, Pharma, FMCG, IT/ ITeS, Telecom & Ed-Tech, etc. Also, our value-based services come with innovative thoughts to provide the best solution to the customer's needs. Lenovo's services portfolio was perfect for our clients.

What is the most preferred brand/product by the customers? Is there any customer trend in the last few months?
Our customers prefer to purchase solutions, rather than products. Thus there has been a demand for products from leading OEMs that offer a complete package from endpoints to servers, storage, data protection, HCI, and security solutions in their portfolio.

Recent customer trends have been to enhance user experience across devices and provide seamlessly, as well as secure connectivity to critical apps from anywhere for the internal and external stakeholders. We have seen demand from varied solutions such as End User Computing to Hybrid Cloud Solutions and Secure Endpoints to Secure Cloud. Almost all large corporations have adopted Secure Access for their employees. Early adopters have also geared up IT infrastructure for remote workers in their risk management plans. Other customers are now implementing VDI, Secure Access Solutions, Virtualization, and Cloud for business continuity at this time.

Among brands preferred, Lenovo was definitely on the top. With added services like Lenovo Premier Support & Onsite Installation, it became the go-to brand for customers. Additionally, the extended warranty support has been a game-changer for customers during these times. We also provided Lenovo Device Intelligence (LDI) Solutions to some customers.

What is the long-term strategy?
Owing to a strong technical team, we have witnessed business growth even during the pandemic period. This was because we were able to offer business continuity solutions with rapid implementation cycles, with the help of our OEM partners. Our sales have been consistently growing and we continue to build skill sets ahead of the demand curve which will help us expand our reach as part of our long-term strategy. In order to maintain business continuity during the pandemic & post-pandemic period, we offered our customers end-to-end solutions, along with Lenovo Premier Support and Lenovo Device Intelligence (LDI) Solutions.

In the recent past, we have bet on all technology that can enable “Work from Anywhere” by facilitating the employees of an organization to work from anywhere in the world, with an equal amount of security and assurance as that of an on-ground office. The technology used to achieve this includes the Cloud, Security & Mobility. We launched Managed Services for Cloud and have created some ready-to-go VDI offerings. Also, our well-established Security and Mobility units already have secured more than a million personal assets for enterprise use.

What do you suggest to improve the efficiency and performance of the channel ecosystem?
As customers become more demanding in times of uncertainty, I believe that partners need to invest in ramping up their own setup and competencies during these challenging times. Technology and business applications need to drive efficiency in the channel ecosystem.
There is an urgent need, for partners like us, to create a digital ecosystem for automating most of the internal sales & marketing processes. Rapid onboarding of new team members and retaining talented employees should also be the focus area using high-touch engagement. Lenovo has ramped up its backend systems to cater to the channel partners in an efficient way with the help of the Lenovo Evolve app and Partner Hub, which in turn helps improve the performance and efficiency of the channel ecosystem.

How is the digital transformation journey while aiding the employees & customers?
Within the first few weeks of the lockdown, we moved our critical apps to the cloud and continue to equip our teams within Galaxy, with the latest technologies. In the last few years, internally we have moved to IT-enabled processes and achieved paperless working with the exception of compliance documents.

Similar to our own transformation journey, our clients were also transforming during those few months, and we discovered some consistent trends. Companies face three distinct phases that we term Respond, Adapt and Accelerate. While we noticed that the order in which companies addressed these phases was not necessarily in chronological sequence. Many companies only started to tackle them after being faced with the challenges. The sooner we could identify where our client is in this journey, the sooner we could, as a team, identify new opportunities to improve and address them.

Our teams are equipped to remotely support customers from anywhere, and our Center of Excellence offers prospective customers hands-on labs on the latest technologies from the comfort of their home or office. This has improved our overall customer experience and we continue to upskill in order to keep up with customer demands.