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Today's
Mandate - To meet their many challenges-grow the business,
retain employees and stave off foreign competition-India's IT
services companies have adopted a common strategy: Offer higher-level
(and higher-paying) strategic business products and services that
improve the vendors' value and help anchor restless employees.
"For our IT industry to continue to grow as it has, we must change
to become an end-to-end solutions provider with excellent services,"
says Agarwal, Chief Technical Officer of Scarlet. This doesn't
mean abandoning the bread-and-butter back-office work-not entirely,
at least-but rather focusing aggressively on the pursuit of strategic
business projects. "We must compete with the Andersen Consulting
[of the world] as an end-to-end company," Agarwal says.
"We're seeking more joint ventures, more equity relationships
with partners," says
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Agarwal."We
need to build total-system consultants and system engineers, not
software consultants
and software engineers."
Indian
vendors will also be challenged to demonstrate that their people
possess the business savvy to compete with the major IT consulting
companies. By their own admission, the IT vendors recruit almost
exclusively at college campuses, and the average age among employees
at these companies is 26. Hardly seasoned business veterans. Western
CIOs may be reluctant to turn over business-critical work to offshore
personnel that might not fully grasp business requirements. "I
wouldn't be worried about turning over the technology; I'd be
worried about [turning over] the business
side," says E-Health's Robinson. "[Indian vendors] have the aptitude
to learn the business savvy, but they're not going to learn it
in India. They've got to come here" and develop U.S. business
experience.
Still, McCaffrey, a specialist in outsourcing says that if the
Indian vendors acquire these capabilities as quickly and as aggressively
as they did their SEI-CMM Level 5 status, then it's not unreasonable
to assume that they might carve out a significant piece of the
business services pie. "Companies that already embrace offshore
outsourcing in general are interested in these [higher-level]
services," McCaffrey says. But, he cautions, "it's going to take
time, and there will be a learning curve."
But is a reputation for "good stuff, fast" any better than "good
stuff, cheap"? It won't be easy for India's IT vendors to change
their image. But then Indians are approaching this mission with
uncommon zeal.
Scarlet's experiment make-world class-consultants-and-managers
The Make-world class-consultants-and-managers experiment is
the brainchild of Scarlet Infotech, one of India's emerging IT
training and software export companies. Based in Noida, Scarlet
operates training centers offering skills-based training to corporations
and common people alike. And nowhere does Scarlet has a higher
profile than in India, where company founder and Chief Executive
Officer Ashish Dwivedi wants his company to be the one that ensures
world class workshops and training to Indians in the growing IT
industry.
"Over my twenty tears of I.T. consulting, I have become convinced
that there are three components of success in executing I.T. projects:
Subject matter expertise (technical and business), project management
/ teamwork and consulting skills. Says David Alev, CEO of Consulting
Academy, USA. "Without the necessary consulting skills to fully
understand the client's needs, formulating the proper solution
and the right communication skills, projects run the risk of failure
in spite of all the technical and Project Management skills in
place. Based on years of experience with Big 5 and other global
consulting companies, We look forward to expand our US operations
to India with Scarlet Infotech," says David.
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