Chrishan Mendis, Chief Executive Officer at Just In Time Group, Chief Deliver Officer Roshan De Silva, and Head of Sales Damitha Jayawardena talk about the company’s progressive 25-year journey from selling laptops and desktop computers to building the digital payment backbone of the economy – and the future.
Just In Time Group began 25 years ago with just four people out of a 100sqft basement. How has the company evolved since then?
Chrishan Mendis: In 1996, from a small basement office with four employees is where it all began, our evolution from selling laptops to integrating the National Switch – this is how we have evolved, by bringing in essential, best of breed and value-added technology, with the future in mind.
The characteristics of our evolution is certainly attributed to our talent, driven by making an impact, adapting to change and our insatiable appetite for knowledge and growth. We acquire new technology, make new investments and delve into new ways and aspects of doing business that we propose to our customers along our journey together- to helps our customers leverage off the required expert knowledge. We have also been blessed with loyal, purpose-driven and experienced staff who give uninterrupted support services to our customers. A key contributory factor, is our DNA to the evolution of JIT, which has always been our strength in relationships built on a foundation of trust, honesty and integrity with our stakeholders – especially our customers, principals and staff.
The Founder and Chairman of JIT, Jit Warnakulasuriya started the company as a dealership for home computers and laptops, but since its founding, our vision has always been to bring in the latest and essential technology to Sri Lanka, to facilitate knowledge transfers and build skills. We have since diversified into enterprise solutions, and building ICT networks on a national scale. Today, 25 years since its founding, we are in the forefront of the ICT industry in Sri Lanka, with a unique team of over 500 skilled and trained staff, where we also stand as a diversified Group, in ICT, IT Resourcing, IT Consultancy and Education, and we are still growing.
The leading ICT systems and solutions integrator pedestal is something we grew into, as we pioneered integrated ICT solutions, introducing technologies not used before in Sri Lanka. Over the years, we have established ourselves as a provider of ICT solutions and services such as systems integration, geographical information systems-based software, cyber security, data analytics, infrastructure and IT resource outsourcing – focusing on banking, telecommunications, government, defence and enterprise sectors.
Today, 25 years since its founding, we are in the forefront of the ict industry in sri lanka, with a unique team of over 500 skilled and trained staff
How is JIT helping the country imagine the future and unlocking potential with technology?
Chrishan Mendis: As we always have, we strive to position intrinsic value through the power of technology to our customers, to give them good returns, not just for today but for the years ahead, to help them grow and stay relevant. Our engagement with our customers runs deep, who in turn trusts us and shares their journey and pain points, for us in turn to work on the solution in putting together the necessary technologies and partners. Our focus is on long-term purposeful engagement rather than selling one off solution, this is why we factor the necessary robustness and capacity, scalability with definitely a strong support mechanism for the customer – where we design solution for complex IT needs, with agility and flexibility when implementing the solutions.
In the future, the country will need more and more digital solutions to increase our productivity and competitiveness as a nation. Digital transactions, currencies, even more complex cyber security needs and cyber defence needs will be required and this is how we will contribute to the nation on any such technologies.
As a systems integrator (SI), we do not just bring in solutions and implement them, we get behind the journey together with the customer and provide the support, maintenance, insights, and technical knowledge required. We do not just provide the hardware but build entire ecosystems around the technology including and develop the people and skills. JIT is a relationships-based company, which is how we see ourselves and our purpose and a key driver of our successes.
Sri Lanka needs to speed up its digitalisation journey. We do not have to reinvent the wheel; we do not have the luxury of perfecting a product and developing upgrade iterations for decades. We also need to avoid the pain of innovating, testing, failing fast and starting all over again, and repeating this process repeatedly. Having said that, developing your own technology is invaluable, but we need to be smart. I believe Sri Lanka should adopt a two-pronged version where we leverage from the rest of the world and clip those services to suit our citizens. At JIT, we have proved this approach works, and as a country, we need a stronger focus and set clear goals about what we want to achieve, and we can influence and drive that transformation.
Jit is helping to transform the fortunes of this country just by living up to the founding vision of the company and continuing on our journey of pioneering transformative technologies in the country
The unfolding Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the digital uptake across businesses and their customers to an extent. Tell us how JIT has enabled this?
Roshan De Silva: The pandemic has forced organisations to reimagine their businesses and re-calibrate strategies. They are increasingly turning to technology to sell goods or engage with clients online and automating processes with digital, robotic process automation, AI, IoT, data analytics and data engineering, our specialities at JIT. Apart from these, we are also focusing on information security and business continuity related solutions. We are ISO 27001:2013 certified for information security and are working on sustainability certification as well. We are also ISO 9001 2015 certified for quality management. All these serve as additional assurances for our clients.
Since the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020, we have supported our clients across the public and private sectors to conduct their day-to-day activities and rollout new projects on time, while maintaining exceptional quality standards. We commenced projects during the lockdown to support essential services immaterial of whether there was a lockdown or not. To ensure we delivered beyond expectations, we took every precaution, including PCR testing, arranging curfew passes for teams and getting our partners engaged in all these activities remotely. As a result, we helped essential services operate uninterrupted even during the subsequent lockdowns, and they continue to engage and add value to people’s lives.
In your view, how is JIT influencing or shaping the future of industries that you work with?
Roshan De Silva: We always maintain a good relationship with our customers. We understand their needs at a deeper level. On the other hand, we are abreast with the emerging products and solutions in the tech industry, enabling us to offer the best solutions to our clients based on their business profile, customer base, performance forecasts and future objectives. This is where the relationship with the customer is especially important because it gives us information on how we need to help them to grow their business to the next level. We also invest in upskilling our teams so that they can in turn help clients optimize tech investment returns.
How is JIT differentiating itself from the competition and what factors are shaping the success of the entire group?
Damitha Jayawardena: As an organization we differentiate ourselves by creating value addition for our customers and providing the bestin-class technology solutions to address their business requirements, enabling them to run their businesses with a competitive advantage.
Of the factors shaping the success of the group are the best-in-class technology we provide, the process we follow to advise customers on the solutions that best suit their needs and how to get the best out of their tech investments. This means building lasting relationships with our clients and partnering them in their journey from the pre-sales stage to after-sales services including support and maintenance. We also have the credentials by way of projects that we have completed especially at the national level which nobody has done. Today we provide the technology for the financial industry in Sri Lanka to run the entire payment solutions at the backbone level. We target a niche market where there is less competition enabling us to create opportunities.
Having pioneered a series of transformative technologies in the country, what are the next innovative solutions in the pipeline?
Damitha Jayawardena: The world is moving rapidly on a wave of technological advancements and the new normal created by the unfolding pandemic. While businesses embrace digital technology to sell goods and services, engage with customers and create value by streamlining processes, cybersecurity and digital solutions for compliance purposes have also emerged as critical needs. Therefore, an integrated system has to have a proven record, and be flexible so that customers plug and play depending on their evolving needs. In the financial services space, fintechs will have an enormous impact and central banks globally are investing in the necessary digital infrastructure for a more inclusive financial system.
The Central Bank of Sri Lanka is ahead of the region. It is facilitating the creation of a strong national digital payments landscape, which we are proud to be a part of this journey. Sri Lanka’s national payment landscape growth is vital to go to the next level by enabling multicurrency transactions and cross border remittances, which will be the new open banking framework network that will attract investments into new fintechs.
The government impetus is essential to make digital government transformation a success, which Sri Lanka’s government is fulfilling as a national objective, where the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) is in line with the national vision of building Sri Lanka into a smart nation, on a journey embarked to driving digital transformation. This is what we are focused on as the next phase of innovation, aligned to the nation’s digital transformation roadmap, adding value for growth and sustainability. ICTA embarked on this journey an all-inclusive capacity building drive with an incorporated a framework, focusing on making the government digitally robust whilst empowering the workforce at all levels. This drive and commitment will only further ensure the government’s effort into building Sri Lanka as a smart nation, to be efficient and effective as a service that will be delivered to all stakeholders. Furthermore, with the newly established Ministry of Technology, Sri Lanka is further committed towards the National Digital Roadmap.
JIT is helping to transform the fortunes of this country just by living up to the founding vision of the company and continuing on our journey of pioneering transformative technologies in the country. How fast Sri Lanka becomes a digital economy will depend on factors such as strong political commitment, clear policy, and workable national strategy. In that journey, JIT has already proved itself as a more than capable partner having already revolutionized the banking and telecommunications and digital payments landscape of this country