Lumis Value Add Each of our investments has a clear execution strategy that involves working with the current management team to lay down the building blocks of an enterprise in the making. This is achieved by joint effort and commitment of the senior leadership of the firm and a diverse set of resources that we bring in to execute. Some key aspects of our Operating philosophy are:

Service Creation & Operating Processes
At Lumis, we believe that “most constructive work involves achieving some kind of a balance.” Mature organizations, irrespective of their size, have a viable set of products and/or services, which they have successfully used to service customers in some markets. The objective is to strike the right balance of product/services portfolio, in context of specific sections of the global market, for rapid scaling.

Our experience has given us insights into professional and cultural preferences of various growth markets. This insight enables us to create an appropriate balance in terms of selecting what to do, what to avoid, how to do it, and most important, how to measure what matters.

Lumis uses a “Spearhead” approach to Service Creation. This approach involves careful evaluation of service/product mix that allows an appropriate entry strategy into a market segment and enables creation of robust delivery capability around that offering to ensure the highest level of delivery and quality. This is followed by several related actions to achieve end goals such as:

• Select among “Easiest to Deliver”, “Most Profitable”, “Most Scalable”, “Highest Demand” alternatives in line with the overall strategy
  
• Consolidate Delivery Teams, Marketing Material, Sales Team and Alliances
  
• Identify and Develop Pilot Accounts
  
• Account Mining for other services through dedicated Account Management
  
• Use Alliances and Sales teams to broaden Customer Base
  
• Obtain Customer Feedback and augment service offering
  
• Evaluate potential M&A for accelerated growth in the chosen area
  

• Setup Delivery Bases where it makes most sense to the customer, and not just where there is a cost arbitrage; integrate delivery from various locations seamlessly.
  
• We do not invest in vanilla service firms, but in domain-rich solutions providers. Hence a keen focus on the Integration of Components such as firmware, analytics, monitoring, exception management, etc.
  
• Managing Operations by measurement and utilization is as critical as inventory and material turns to a plant. We believe in deploying robust production methodologies early on in a business lifecycle and then monitoring metrics very tightly on the line. Reiterating as stated above, measure what matters.
  

• The entire leadership team including the CEO and Delivery Leaders own the numbers and hence the responsibility to charter the growth story stays with them, and not just with Business Development team as a function.
  
• Hunting (new client generation) & Farming (cultivating and growing established clients) are separate functions, and hence people with separate skills should staff them. While Business Development does get the right attention it deserves, Account Management often gets undermined in small to mid-sized businesses, which should not be the case. Getting the best subject matter experts in front of existing clients as relationship- owners is vital, and an accordant structure should be created in the organization to enable such client management.
  
• We also believe that for successful operations in several different markets, it is imperative to have robust commercial processes that support the Business Development team and ensure full transparency and compliance from a customer perspective.
  

• M & A should be truly leveraged for capability or geographic augmentation, and not just to buy revenues on book.
  
• All three – M & A, Alliances & Partnerships – should be structured with adequate focus on in-principle connect with leadership teams of both sides. It would be important to ensure that the three don’t end up becoming just channel management.
  
• Partnership play-out is best when services/solutions get truly stitched into one integrated offering and not another item on the menu, which makes the “part” always believe that the “whole” needs them more rather than evolve as a composite ecosystem.