Knowledge - the most valuable asset in technology business

by Gamini Warushamana

[email protected]

According to economic theories only capital assets increase the productivity of labour.

Therefore, the productivity of an enterprise is measured only in terms of the productivity of its capital, i.e return-on-assets or return-on-investment.

The providers of capital are then entitled to the surplus, called profit or rent.

If knowledge happens to be necessary for labour to make better use of capital, mental labour should get higher returns.

In this knowledge era there is a paradox whether knowledge is a kind of labour or capital. Zone 24X7, a global technology company with Sri Lankan roots considers knowledge as capital and has come up with a new way of giving returns for knowledge capital.

Technopreneurs

Vice President, Global Operations of Zone 24X7 Manjula Dissanayake said, “the most valuable asset in this technology business is knowledge.

Therefore, we have introduced a way for our knowledge workers to become entrepreneurs. The Zone called them Technopreneurs.

As a technology solutions company we always strive to acquire the latest technology advancements. As Technopreneurs, we encourage our engineers to see how technology could be used to solve problems of our clients.

We have a process called “Zone Customer Centric Innovation (ZCCI)”, he said. Dissanayake said that a successful technology solution should disrupt the whole way of doing something to a better and advanced process.

“Many of our technology solutions disrupted the whole process in some businesses in the US, our main market.

Our solutions disrupted the whole retail trade in the US and the old system was replaced with more efficient and technologically advanced processes. First, it was before Zone 24 X 7 was started.

The founder of the Zone 24X7, Lalvan Fernando introduced the electronic signature capture technology. It eliminated paper billing and made a revolution in the electronic payment systems.

Then Zone disrupted the electronic display again in the supermarkets in the US. In the supermarkets, there are thousands of promotional campaigns. For instance the “buy one get one free during the weekends”, for one particular soap brand.

In this way there are thousands of promotional displays in a big department store.

Changing these displays from time to time is difficult work. In 2005 we came up with a solution called ZyberSigns. It was a combination of electrophoretic Display (EPD) technology and ZigBee technology. ZyberSigns is a fully computerised display solution that eliminated all hassles in the system.

ZyberSigns is not an invention. It is an innovation or a breakthrough idea in the productive use of existing technologies, Dissanayake said.

Innovative solutions

When these innovative solutions reach the market and start generating sufficient revenue the mental labour deposited in it starts generating profits.

In Zone 24x7, such solutions spin-off as separate companies.

Where the contributors would literally run this spin-off company. Those engineers who developed the solution have equity in this new venture.

Zone 24X7 already has three such products that would come up as spin-off companies. One is the Unified Device Management Platform: a platform that can manage heterogenous devices manufactured by different device manufacturers. The other two are ZyberSigns and SoftTouch solutions.

Zone 24X7 intends to use this model to retain experienced people in the company, the most serious issue the IT industry, faces today.

Retention of engineers is a difficult task due to the short supply and growing demand. Engineers leave the companies with knowledge, skills, domain knowledge as well as the most important codes or IPs.

Dissanayake said that Sri Lanka with a little over 20 million population cannot play in numbers in this economic game. We have to play in value. In this knowledge era we should exploit high value knowledge jobs that give higher returns, he said.

Analytical skills

He said that Sri Lanka has already shown that the country has the capability. Most of our software companies have proved the talents of the Sri Lankan knowledge workers. The analytical skills of our engineers are superior compared to others.

The technology enables us to closely work with our clients.

We provide a free video conferencing facility to our clients and they can have direct contact with our engineers.

We got a project recently from the Atlanta State Government and they wanted to do the project in the US. However, we convinced them that there is no difference in doing it in Colombo with the technology we are using and we did the project here, Dissanayake said.

Zone 24X7, as a global company focuses mainly on the US market. We also have clients in Canada, Europe and China. We are looking at the Middle East market as well. We encourage Lankans to use our solutions in the local context to improve the technology in Sri Lanka.

We were recently awarded a World Bank grant through ICTA to provide a platform to market SME products and services in the global market. We are ready to provide a web based solution called Z Trade, making a global market place for Sri Lankan businesses, Dissanayake said.