On the heels of a very successful event at which Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen unveiled a futuristic IRS Transformation, we caught up with Anil Sharma, Chief Executive Officer with 22nd Century Technologies and Sovon Mookerjee, Vice President, Business Development, Capture and Growth, FedCiv Sector. The two shared the success of their value added focus, their lens on partnerships, and the evolution of IDPBot from a small pilot contract to a winning IRS Solution.
Value Add Focus
From its inception, 22nd Century has been focused on bringing innovation and adding value for its clients. This above-and-beyond approach took the company from its humble beginnings as a $2M firm to $70M in less than a decade. The company’s current revenue stands at $450M. “Even as a very small business, we knew it was important to invest in innovation – to bring more to our efforts than the customer asks or expects. That has led to success delivering work largely as a prime contractor, and led to our success in maintaining contracts through recompetes.”
While 22nd Century is built primarily on the services side, a new division launched three years ago proved to be opportunity to add innovative products to its already-winning consulting and services solutions. IDPBot, the celebrated IRS solution, is one such product.
Partners
A unique innovation component for this team is its partnership with George Mason University. Through this, the company is able to harness the creativity and passion of young minds in helping drive new responses and new possibilities. “We also look to partners in the industry, creative partners that we know are doing good work in other spaces. Bringing together our technical people, program teams, and customers, we get a lot of great minds driving unique solutions. Partners are a key component of our success. Where we are today is due in large part to them.”
Using an approach that combines customer challenges, input from capture and research teams with respect to what may be coming next, what others are discussing. “Bringing together known challenges, information available in the market or open public domains, known strategies and new ideas we can bring new focus and solve challenges in forward-thinking and broad scope ways.”
Coming from the small business view, 22nd Century understands the potential small businesses bring to the table and is open to having those conversations and forging new relationships. Those conversations, though, need to start from the mindset of adding value, knowing what that potential partner has, and their differentiator.
Focusing for Success
22nd Century is focused on taking on challenges that are meaningful. Projects where they believe they can deliver success for the customer. To promise the moon and then not deliver, does no good for anyone. (maybe you can frame this as a company philosophy. I was confused by how this tied into this paragraph) “We start with a pilot or proof-of-concept to ensure we are on track with what [our clients ] had imagined and then once that is confirmed, we can go further.”
That focus on success also means leaning into partners as true partners. “We don’t consider our partners as subcontractors. They are part of the process, part of the decision-making. We both have a role in our success, are both responsible in delivery – so there needs to be equality.”
IDPBot
22nd Century has been an IRS and Treasury Department partner for over a decade, providing support to over 25 programs, including six large active contracts.
Guided by the IRS’ vision to go paperless by 2025, IDPBot evolved from a goal of bringing together people, processes, partners and technology, into a solution that was repeatable and scalable. “When we approach any challenge, we are not only looking at the present – what they are dealing with now – but we hope to also look to future challenges they may not have yet envisioned so they have a longer term and more sustainable way forward.”
Leveraging experience with other clients focused on forward movement toward being ‘green’. “It actually started with a $75K contract for a pilot project, which because of its size many companies would not have been interested in. For us, though, it represented an opportunity to develop and trial some real innovation… to solve a real challenge in a new way.”
“Relying on an integrated team and feedback focused on learning and improving, on making it more efficient and cost-effective, layering in intelligent document processing, intelligent data processing and pulling the information out of handwritten documents, using a machine learning model that will continue to evolve and improve, we ended up with a solution that will be applicable for many of our customers and many future customers.”
Rather than simply looking at the data though, the team looked to provide insights including how it impacts the filing itself, the analytics beyond the capture of data.
Investing and Listening
Innovation requires investment, in time and people. “Utilize the resources that are willing to share, and then share the rewards with them.”
“Listening cannot be understated. Don’t try to answer before a customer has stated the problem, or explained their pain points.” There are many in the industry with what they believe are great solutions, great capabilities. While that may be true, you will go nowhere without the ability to have people listen to your concept, to bring a tangible product they can see and understand, one that has demonstrable benefit.
“That ability to have people listen is thanks to developed relationships, to have that long-term history of trust, of listening, of delivering, both on the client and partner side. Our hope always is to work with people for the long-term, to deliver to customers, to help partners shine, and to allow them to take center stage so they can grow and evolve as well.”
About 22nd Century Technologies
22nd Century Technologies Inc., (TSCTI) is a management and technology consulting company, focused on providing IT managed services and solution to Federal, State and Local governments. With over 6000 employees, TSCTI has been serving public entities for over 25 years through 370+ government contracts across the 50 United States solving mission critical programs in digital transformation, cloud migration, Cyber Security, IT infrastructure, ITSM and O&M.
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