Company: Perituza Software Solutions
Company Description: Perituza is a full-service custom software development company based in Houston, Texas, with offices in Colombo, Sri Lanka and New Delhi, India. We provide custom technology solutions to businesses looking to reduce cost, increase efficiency, or enhance productivity. Our services include custom application development, business process automation, and IT staff augmentation.
Nomination Category: Communications & Marketing Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Communications or PR Campaign of the Year - Reputation/Brand Management
 Nomination Title: Three Countries, One Unified Team Culture
- Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes, explaining the nominated campaign or program - its genesis,development, planning, commission, and performance to date - OR written answers to the questions? (Choose one):
Written answers to the questions
- If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video. If you are submitting written answers to the questions, provide them in the appropriate spaces below:
- Describe the development of the campaign or program: the planning process, the goal setting, the creative and media development, the scheduling, etc. (up to 250 words):
Total 250 words used.
I contracted with our film production partner (CaptureEye Pvt. Ltd.) in December 2022 for our March/April 2023 filming project. Unfortunately, as a small company of only 23 full-time team members, our budget for the March/April project was limited (we spent ~$17,000 on CaptureEye's production services, plus site location rentals, employee travel, and other filming-related fees).
Due to the hard dollar costs we would incur from the filming, I wrote the scripts myself and worked through the scope of the campaign with my co-founder, Asanka. I taught myself how to write scripts by watching YouTube videos and purchasing a StudioBinder software subscription. Between December-March, I scoped the campaign and wrote the scripts for each video. I even scheduled an additional employee event - our first "ReConnect" - which allowed all of our remote employees to gather again, and participate in the filming. As part of our commitment to putting our team members at the forefront of this project, I gave every team member a voice cut, as long as they were able to attending the filming date.
Since my team members had to be excused from client projects to film and attend our ReConnect, I set up the initial schedule, although CaptureEye and I collaborated on the schedule together, and they secured the filming permissions. I landed in Sri Lanka three days prior to our first filming date, and we spent those three days in pre-production. Our campaign was filmed over the following three weeks, and post-production took eight days.
- Specify the date on which this campaign or program was launched:
The first video of our PR campaign, "Perituza's Sinhala & Tamil New Year (2023)", was published on April 18, 2023. The campaign still in progress, and the videos we recorded throughout March/April 2023 will continue to be published through the end of Q3 2023.
- Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):
Total 133 words used.
The 12 videos that are attached were all part of our PR campaign - we filmed a total of 13 videos in November, March, and April, although production started in April. The only video that was not included with this submission was our "Behind the Scenes" video.
Our campaign was designed to be multi-faceted, and focused on employee engagement. We wanted to show our employees as the face of the campaign, and to show our company commitment to employee satisfaction, work-life balance, and the community.
Our portfolio of videos included employee event recaps, CSR event recaps, employee spotlights, founder spotlights, an intern spotlight, a recruiting video, and a video featuring Perituza's service offerings. All videos include employee voice cuts and b-rolls, and I collaborated with the employees on their scripts prior to filming.
- Describe the genesis of the nominated campaign or program: the reasons it was initiated, the challenges it was created to address, the problems it was developed to solve, etc. (up to 250 words):
Total 245 words used.
We launched this PR campaign because we were struggling with talent acquisition in Sri Lanka and India. We had been trying to hire senior software developers, but found that we couldn't attract the right candidates.
Since our developers work directly with US clients, we were looking for candidates who could overlap at least a half day with our US clients, and who also had great communication and soft skills, in addition to strong technical skills. While I started reaching out to candidates directly via LinkedIn Recruiter, we found that we couldn't pull candidates from either consulting backgrounds or from large companies. As a result, our growth during 2022 was limited because we didn't have a sufficient pool of software developers to work on our clients' projects. Unfortunately, we even lost a client project because we couldn't fill a developer opening quickly enough.
I benchmarked the social media of other IT consulting companies in Sri Lanka, and found that those companies had very strong social media presence - some companies were even pushing out video content on a bi-weekly basis. Those companies' social media accounts were not even focused on the products/services offered - they were >90% focused on the employee experience and corporate social responsibility (CSR). As a result, I decided to launch our first PR campaign, which would be targeted to potential candidates in Sri Lanka and India. I wanted to show them "the faces of Perituza", as well as our employee-centric team culture.
- Outline the activities and concrete results of this campaign or program since the beginning of July 2021. Even if your initiative started before July 2021, limit your response to activities and results since the beginning of July 2021 only (up to 250 words):
Total 241 words used.
When I joined Perituza during January 2022, we only had ~700 LinkedIn followers. As we've launched our videos on both LinkedIn and YouTube, we've steadily increased to more than 2,200 LinkedIn followers.
I have been posting the new videos and associated photos to LinkedIn and YouTube every 2-4 weeks - the frequency depends on the other content that we have to post. We have also been sending our video & photo recaps to our candidates who are in the interview pipeline, as well as clients.
We've found talent acquisition to be much easier as prospective candidates have viewed our content, and we now receive a significantly higher volume of applications as a result. For example, we recently received more than 900 applications for a Sri Lankan IT intern position, and more than 300 applications each for our India-based Software Developer III and Tech Lead openings. The quality of the applications has also increased significantly, and our time-to-fill has significantly reduced.
Even though our target for this campaign is potential candidates, we've received feedback from multiple candidates that they're proud to work with Perituza. Their feedback is that we're not a stereotypical offshore company; we are a premium brand and they are proud to work with us. They believe that our team culture and our treatment of our team members with US standards is a differentiator. We've even acquired new clients as a result of the videos that we've already published.
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