There are very few companies on the island whose name rings almost synonymous with scale, reliability and diversity. However, the LOLC Group and its assortment of subsidiaries have developed a conglomerate that is truly magnificent to behold, not only for its sheer scale but also in how they have, over time, altered the fabric of how businesses are run in Sri Lanka.
In a company that is as large as the LOLC Group, there is only one way that it has managed to remain agile and adaptive to the rapid pace of the world around it, and that is primarily due to the foresight and pioneering influence of a particular subsidiary, namely, LOLC Technologies.
LOLC Technologies has grown from a small team of just 15 people to a burgeoning coalition of 200 plus people over the past 20 years. In the beginning, the company’s primary function was to assist in maintaining and developing the overall Group’s financial products, particularly in the leasing sector, where the LOLC brand holds the most renown.
Through their efforts in this field, LOLC Technologies changed how the LOLC Group operated by creating a holistic platform for leasing services. Further, they not only incubated and scaled up internally but then eventually moved out of the country to offer these bespoke services to other nations.
Today, LOLC Technologies is regarded as one of the largest IT companies in the country and currently conducts software engineering services for niches beyond the leasing sector. They have also developed their portfolio of internal tools and have successfully gained Intellectual Property rights and provided information security.
The journey of the business from being a small-scale team supporting the development of a leasing product to becoming an industry leader that holds several banking products has provided the necessary impetus to delve into a variety of other sectors such as trading and even manufacturing. Overcoming the obstacles that lay on their summit to the industry’s peak has allowed LOLC Technologies to become a genuinely multifaceted business locally and internationally, with client bases in India, the Philippines, Pakistan, Nigeria and Zambia.
A core banking service LOLC Technologies currently provides, namely Fusion, has gained significant traction and has built a user base of 10,000+ users strong across close to 200+ companies. Moreover, one of the reasons LOLC Technologies has been able to develop its business and technology suites to its peaks today is the management philosophy throughout its operations.
The fundamental theory that LOLC implements are that transparency in management is vital. This is particularly important when there is a need to provide IT services as a shared service. True to its innovative streak, LOLC Technologies developed a cloud-based service management system called OASYS, which was well ahead of its time in the economic ecosystem in Sri Lanka. OASYS allows LOLC to manage productivity and can be adapted into various functionalities from business process automation to HR services.
Over the years, LOLC has also built a large-scale network of partnerships with global entities to bring to the table a stunning array of professional services to provide internal and external clients with a targeted solution to their pain points. For example, in 2009, to bolster the growth of the overall Group in parallel to the country’s stability, the challenge of satisfying demands for improved IT services, dynamic provision of IT services to external clients and optimizing the existing IT infrastructure expenditure. This was resolved for the Group by LOLC Technologies in conjunction with VMware vCloud Suite by establishing a Software-Defined Datacenter from their existing virtualized infrastructure.
Moreover, aside from being the go-to solution provider for all the internal subsidiaries, LOLC Technologies has also endeavoured to give back by developing initiatives that nurture innovation and the knowledge base of Sri Lankan students.
With the establishment of a scholarship programme for local students, high-performing students have been allowed to work and train within the LOLC Technologies infrastructure. This is solely driven by the company ethos in uplifting the technology ecosystem of Sri Lanka, with the explicit support of LOLC Group higher management. The ultimate hope is that by giving back to the local community, Sri Lanka will minimize brain drain and retain the passionate software engineering youth for the future.