Disrupt IT for client biz-tech solutions

Offshore outsourcing is the uneasy gossip in the political climate of developed countries. The 11 million Americans who lost jobs while the recession are mostly nevertheless unemployed, and economic growth is miniscule. In this backdrop, only a case for business performance or value as measured by revenue, profit, customer satisfaction and market share justifies the significant, indispensable, recurring IT expenditure. Global IT and research services buyers are contemplating how to de-risk IT investment. IT has become commoditised like paying for water supply or power. From operational cost cutting, IT is nevertheless assuming a business performance requirement, the only way for it to stay relevant.

Role change for CIOs: IT services are on the whole pretty much a buyer's market. The recession has increased the client's price sensitivity. Ten years ago, a business driven CIO in global companies was a rarity. Business but has no tolerance for CIOs who are only technologists. Even though they in spite of everything need IT understanding, new generation CIOs are compelled to align innovation for their company's business value and performance. The pace of change dictates that they must be part of the executive team. How will Indian IT professionals, who are largely from technical backgrounds and horizontal services, fit here? Global IT brands establish client relationships at a business level with the CFO or COO, not necessarily targeting the CIO. So they are at a less competitive space; they get both high and low-end businesses. Indian origin IT firms are very strong at working reliably and technically only with CIOs or their reportees. They fight it out as commodity players in that competitive price zone. How can they re-orient and shift focus towards helping increase the client's business? There's some hype of IT companies appointing senior professionals from different industries to present to IT buying customers. However clients find such force fitting to be more like a façade to hide shortcomings of their know how. This move probably helps Indian companies to deliver better, in other words than improve the customer's business performance.

When research is indiscriminately advancing, customers no longer say, "Write this code." What they ask is, "Help me optimise my supply chain efficiencies." In a rapidly shifting economy, if Indian IT companies proactively delve deep into the client's industry, they can find innovation-enabled solutions that the client never thought of, in short increase the client's business prospects. By crafting new services or tweaking current service, Indian IT can display technology.

The CEO client

Surprise the CEO client: How can you as an Indian origin IT company, make the difference? To be the client's research mentor or strategic partner vertically, you have to understand his industry and core processes from the board room down to the factory floor. From a service delivery point of view, how does the client interact with his customers or end-clients? Find out where that chain is broken or not aligned, and fill in some of those holes. To impress the CEO, you have to know the few things that a CEO can impact in his or her time in the organisation, which are the market, resources, capital and service offerings. When you vertically, not horizontally, integrate inside the client's business, you can find and fix those alignment problems to become his preferred strategic partner. Coming in with a proposal that you can do everything, just doesn't work. Most customers don't want that, they seek focus. It is much better for organisations to re-invent themselves to specialise, have depth of service, be narrow, not wide.

Riding on the brand: The global IT companies use their branding on two axes, i.e. relevant solutions and delivery excellence. Accenture's "High performance, delivered" is proactive and solution oriented, indicating that the firm is at the intersection of business and IT. IBM's "Smarter planet" is again a business orientation. Global brands take that extra excellence in delivery, and marry it on the front-end with excellence in solutioning. To survive not being commoditised, Indian origin IT services companies need to proactively provide the client with an possibility, a point of view of where the world and their business in it is going. For instance, one global IT major has documented how cloud computing is going to impact industries, how will it play out and how companies in that vertical should think about it. But this global IT biggie is hammering home that it is different, cost competitive, and it dominates with verticals.

The business people on the whole want research execution probably more than CIOs do, now that is at a business level. When they want to connect the front end with the backend, Indian IT can provide the research execution of business. Yet are Indian IT brands considered credible for entrusting high end jobs to? By acquiring and exposing industry expertise for the client's business advantage, Indian IT can run delivery discipline through their go-to-market to give research usage a business-like perspective. Aside from focus on vertical centricity, the areas crucial for Indian IT brands to address are relevant soft skills in every customer touch point, outstanding delivery execution with high technology skillset and seamless localisation in their different countries of operation. With a central passion to increase the client's business prospects, challenging them with market driven new ideas, Indian IT brands can make that paradigm shift to gain a positive image.

-Shombit Sengupta is an international creative business strategy consultant to top managements. Reach him at www.shiningconsulting.com

MSN India brings you latest Headlines, Breaking News and Mobile updates- all in a single click. Nevertheless, check out minute by minute update on national, global & business news on Twitter.