l How has the
merger been so far? How different are PwC and IBM as organizations and how much
has the difference in cultures mattered?
There are more similarities than differences. There is a strong commonality
in the culture of the two organizations. Both PwC and IBM are client-focussed
organizations and collaboration and teaming are core areas for both. Also, both
IBM and PwC have a culture of respect for the individual. Knowledge management
and self-development of our people are central to both organizations. We have so
many things in common that the integration has been very smooth. Of course there
are differences in the way we operate and that’s because of the fact that we
are different companies. IBM is very large in several areas while we have areas
like audit and tax, which are totally different from the kind of consulting IBM
offers. For people from PwC, the change has been to try and understand the
largeness of IBM, and how to fit into the matrix of the organization.
|
l When is the
integration likely to be complete?
In the key area of clients and services, we have already merged. We now have
a single face for the client. Some business process issues like how we do
billing, which year we do it etc have to be ironed out. But these are issues
with any large merger and they will iron themselves out. We may not have one
financial system or one way to claim expenses today but we will have it shortly.
The credit to IBM is that they kept the whole group together instead of breaking
it up. If that had happened, there would have been other issues to sort out.
Instead, they have formed a whole group called Business Consulting Services and
employees of PwC have been put under this group.
l What are the
respective strengths that PwC and IBM bring to the table in India?
What PwC really brings in, is our leadership position in certain areas like
enterprise resource planning including SAP, Peoplesoft, and Oracle. PwC is in a
dominant position globally as well as in India in the ERP space. We have a
leadership position in the supply chain, generally speaking. And it’s just not
just on ERP products. That’s just a part of the supply chain. Globally PWC are
leaders in the CRM space. We bring depth of industry knowledge in areas we
operate in like industrial finance, financial services, communication, and
distribution. And we also bring in deep client relationships with large clients
in these industries.
IBM brings in the deep resources of IBM Global Finance, and the strength of
IBM’s software and hardware brands. By combining IBM and PwC, what we have
created is a company that can provide end-to-end solutions from the strategy end
right through to business process transformation, ERP and IT (technology
implementation) to outsourcing. We also happen to be the master of the vertical
spaces. That’s something nobody in the industry can do. What it does for IBM
is change the game globally. We’ll provide unparalleled service and value
proposition to clients. We will transform a services company to a solutions
company. And we won’t be just selling products to provide solutions. While our
competitors will have three or four companies joining together to form an
alliance to provide a complex solution, we can do it all in-house.
l Would there
be pressure to always recommend an IBM product?
There’s no shame in recommending something we believe is good. Clients are
not fools, they understand. We will recommend IBM products where we think they
are good but we have the mandate and independence to recommend anything else.
The days of the typically independent consultant are over and it’s the age of
collaboration today. You cannot provide solutions to complex problems of clients
from formulation to implementation without really having a wide footprint.
l What are the
industry verticals you are looking at? And why?
We concentrate on a couple of basic industry verticals. The first one is
called industrial which includes all products that corporates buy. It could
include computers, oil and gas or even boilers. Our focus on this group is
supply chain management.
These companies thrive by having an efficient supply chain. ERPs have been a
very important component of the implementation of the supply chain. Several
large companies in India have implemented ERPs and have got benefits in terms of
integrating disparate processes and different components of the value chain.
The next vertical we are looking at is the distribution sector. Here too our
focus is on the supply chain. This vertical includes consumer and packaged good
(CPG) companies making food products or other kinds of products. It also
includes retail, life sciences and the pharma sector. Our focus is on the CPG
and pharma life sciences though we also see retail taking off in India. CRM is
exceedingly important for life sciences and retail. Point of sale is important
for the retail group and sales force automation is crucial for all CPG and
pharma companies. Interestingly, for the pharma companies, drug discovery and
clinical trials have become areas where the use of technology is increasing. The
data churned out during these trials is huge. Sifting through the data and
getting information and knowledge is not an easy task. Today, the technology
components are in place to do that and pharma companies are waking up to it. In
the communication sector, we are focussing on telecom, utility companies, media
and entertainment. For telecom companies, CRM is exceedingly important. And it’s
just not about call centers only. With a churn taking place in this sector in
India, billing and customer care are crucial and that’s an important area for
us.
The next important sector for us is financial services. The type of services
we provide in this sector depends on the nature of the institution. Government
owned banks are still trying to implement core banking into the thousands of
branches across the country. Having centralized systems, having flexibility to
expand to more branches are areas they are still coping with. They are usually
overweight and can derive a lot of benefit by streamlining processes, cutting
out duplication, and removing redundant processes. The new generation Indian
banks already have core-banking solutions and are exploring business process
outsourcing and doing away with the non-core activities by giving them away to
service providers. They are also looking at taking the transaction data from the
customers and getting knowledge out of it in terms of profitability by customer
groups and product groups.
l Are there
likely to be redundancies ?
We’ve come together not to make people redundant but to grow the business.
We’re not looking at the negatives now; we are looking at growing the market.
l What are
your future targets?
I do not want to make any predictions but I would say that we are very
bullish on India.