Every week, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) processes thousands of immigrant visa and naturalization petitions, and Sonny Kakar helps the agency operate more efficiently. As the founder and CEO of Sevatec, a Falls Church, Va.-based high-technology services firm serving markets such as homeland security and law enforcement, Kakar focuses on ways to simplify labor-intensive workflows, such as the I-90 visa process.
A big focus for Kakar, an immigrant himself, is pinpointing snags in the workflow process. “We’re using some fairly advanced business intelligence to identify bottlenecks based on predictive and historical data analytics techniques,” says Kakar. “CIS brought us in to dig into their data and improve their efficiencies, which will ultimately allow well-intentioned immigrants to come to this country and build a life for themselves.”
For Kakar, that work with CIS ramped up in April 2014, when Sevatec was awarded a prime contract to support the agency’s Data & Business Intelligence section. “When we were awarded this contract, we learned quickly that the needs of the customer were not being satisfied. We assembled our team of experts in data analytics and business intelligence to provide meaningful information that CIS previously never had access to,” says Kakar.
By listening closely to the data needs of CIS field analysts and applying Agile methodologies, Kakar is building a business intelligence platform that helps CIS answer critical questions when a bottleneck occurs: How long does a “typical” case take to adjudicate? What are outlier conditions? Are cases being adjudicated by the same person? How often does a case change hands? Through those tools, Kakar is helping CIS look at cases through a clearer, more objective lens in order to more effectively achieve its mission.
Sevatec’s ability to secure the CIS prime contract win came on the heels of previous work in the data and business intelligence arena and its knowledge of CIS challenges. “We have substantial credibility and experience providing very similar capabilities and, ultimately, mission results for other customers,” says Kakar, whose past wins include hundreds of millions of dollars of mission-focused work across the federal government aimed at protecting and improving the lives of Americans.
Another key to success has been Sevatec’s status as a mid-sized firm. “As a privately owned firm, my leadership team and I are personally accessible and available to our customers to address any challenge, with the promise that they will receive immediate response and action,” says Kakar, whose company name, Sevatec, comes from the Punjabi word, “seva,” or “inspired to serve.”
“I believe what customers are realizing is that highly capable mid-sized firms, like Sevatec, have the credibility to deliver consistently, the agility to adapt quickly, and service attitude to commit the resources of the firm toward their mission success,” says Kakar. “Many of the mega firms just cannot execute on this promise.”
That passion for serving has translated into rapid growth. Over the last four years alone, Sevatec has grown 400 percent. Its fastest-growing markets are Homeland and Law Enforcement, Transportation, and National Security, where Sevatec provides leading Agile Software solutions, Cyber Engineering, Big Data solutions, Cloud Enablement, and Enterprise Learning.
“We’re highly focused on delivering mission-oriented solutions across the Homeland Security and Law Enforcement market,” says Kakar. “It’s a unique market for us where all of the expertise of the firm, including data, cyber, agile software, cloud, learning, converge to support critical missions for the nation.”
Among its initiatives to stay competitive, Sevatec has implemented Dr. Bradford Smart’s Top Grading, a recruiting best practice program that ensures high capture of top talent. Sevatec is also a CMMI Level 3 organization for both Development and Services, and ISO 9001:2008, ISO 20000-1:2011, and 27001:2013 certified.
“Our customer satisfaction is at an all-time high,” says Kakar, whose company has over 300 employees. “That only happens when your collective team operates off shared core values and measures its success from the outcomes achieved for its customers.”
In addition to customer focus, Kakar ensures that Sevatec focuses on philanthropic efforts. Many of those efforts help dispel misconceptions about immigrants. Kakar, who is a follower of the Sikh faith, the world’s fifth largest religion, originating out of India, supports human rights groups such as Sikh Coalition, Amnesty International, SALDEF and ENSAAF, among other organizations, to create awareness and promote tolerance.
“Just like anything else – your personal health, family and all other relationships in your life – philanthropy and service must be a priority for those who are blessed to be the 1%’ers,” says Kakar. “Similarly, a company needs to fulfill its purpose through community service and philanthropy as well.”
In the midst of this well-rounded focus, Sevatec is continuing its work with CIS, and the Department of Homeland Security as a whole, where Sevatec is expanding its data warehouse and business intelligence footprint. “Our portfolio of data-related support is expanding,” says Kakar. “Ultimately this data needs to be cohesive, not just on an organizational level but really on a departmental level, too.”
Future work includes continuing to build out the CIS data warehouse to bridge all CIS data domains, ultimately providing a view of data that covers an immigrant’s entire experience with the immigration process (e.g. forms processing, customer service requests, appointment scheduling, etc.) The Sevatec team is also delivering a new capability that allows CIS field offices to automate the manual alien file inventory and auditing effort. The response from the field has been pure jubilation, with feedback such as, “This is so huge. I can’t thank you enough for listening to us.”
Recently Sevatec won a contract with DHS headquarters to support the data warehouse that tracks real estate, assets, and energy/environmental sustainability data. This new program utilizes the same toolset and capabilities as the CIS effort, allowing Kakar to source from a pool of industry data experts across teams to service DHS reporting needs efficiently and with superior quality.
“It’s really exciting to see that [work]unfold,” says Kakar, “it’s a great opportunity for us to provide some significant and meaningful value to help DHS achieve its mission.”
1 Comment
Interesting marketing piece. One must wonder how this “news” lines up with the recent Wash Post front page article on how USCIS project is billions over budget with only 1 form working after years of development.