ASIRT takes up HR issues

Association of System Integrators and Retailers in Technology (ASIRT) recently concluded its third edition of Techday. The members, at the event, discussed the strategic and tactical role of HR in running and scaling business.

The event kicked off with introductions of the new members, followed by a presentation by Manish Goenka of ICONS. Goenka showcased along with live demo of Dragon Naturally Speaking software for Indian voice recognition. He further showcased a presentation on PDF converter professional. Following Manish was Pankaj Goenka from ICONS showcasing ioSafe, provider of disaster proof hardware that provides data protection against fire, flood and theft. Pankaj immediately forged partnerships with at least 3 system integrators to carry this solution to market and one of them even carried 2 boxes for demonstration to his business-customers.

The next on charts was the presentation by Ozonetel, which showcased its latest telephony solutions and telephony in cloud. Their prime product - Bizphone provides a unique phone number with integrated cloud-based IVR and PBX. This solution offers integrated Business Productivity Application for unified business communications. The company official also demonstrated another product called CloudAgent, which is a virtual call center offering being used by various verticals. Kshitij Kotak of ASIRT said, "Both these products add a vertical to ASIRT members for new business opportunities or deep sell to their existing customers generating win-win partnerships with sponsors."

The finale of the event was most awaited as it had a speech by Zubin Patel, managing director of Insights India, on HR practices for small businesses. Patel guided the attendees on strategic and tactical role of HR in running and scaling business, talent acquisition, retention, employability, performance measurement, expectations, feedback recognition, motivating for performance enhancement. He emphasised on the fact that even small companies with lower staff strength needs a HR management strategy and a full/part time HR manager to take care of this vital function in their company. One notable aspect of Patel's workshop was when he shared experiences from his corporate life. One of this was that employee retention is a problem across industries and not specific to IT industry, which was the impression so far.