AZIM H PREMJI, CHAIRMAN, WIPRO
CORP.
Allow me to congratulate DATAQUEST on
having achieved 15 years of success and growth. Wipro has been in the IT business for a
little over 17 years. In that sense, we are contemporaries.
hspace="0" width="128" height="227">Apart from having traversed the distance in the same
stretch of time, both DQ and Wipro have other things in common. Both have been ahead of
their time in many ways. Having created a successful market alignment by utilizing their
business savvy, both have become leaders in their own spheres of action. But leadership
brings in its wake a unique set of vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities that only afflict
leaders and that only leaders can withstand. I want to talk about some of these. In the
next 15 years, Indian companies will have to recognize, understand, and overcome four
major vulnerabilities-brand, quality, innovation, and integrity.
Brand
First, let us talk about brand. About three years ago, I was convinced that Indian
companies like Wipro have not fully understood the alchemy, the power, and the
vulnerability of brand as a corporate strategy. Brands are fortresses. If we do not have a
strong and on-going brand strategy, customers will not know how to differentiate between
us and our competitors and, therefore, whom should they choose. Internationally, people
have grasped the importance of brand building so well that they may be prepared to put a
company up for sale, but not its brand.
Brands are not about pouring bottomless
budgets into media advertising. Nor are they about creating hype for an organization. To
effectively capture the mindshare of a customer, a brand must commit and communicate what
is the distinct value offered by the organization and deliver this value day after day.
The brand has become a science and a
corporate art that takes a lot of understanding, research, and top management's time. At
Wipro, we are currently researching the Wipro brand and corporate identity. This study has
led to the discovery of several interesting insights on what we stand for and the status
we could potentially occupy in the Indian and global marketplace. In an industry
characterized by rapid metamorphosis, where caterpillars turn into butterflies and
butterflies are overnight driven back into their cocoons, one can either lead change or
concede leadership. And we want to lead change.
We have realized that whatever may be your
business, in a free market economy, you have to build strong brands. Facing international
competition with unbranded products and services will be disastrous. It would be akin to
the fate of the Indian emperor who had gone to battle with elephants against an enemy
armed with cannon balls.
Quality
The next issue is quality. In the early nineties, we became a pioneer in introducing
quality when our manufacturing and service businesses went through ISO certification. But
we soon realized that ISO 9000 is not the last benchmark of quality.
I personally spend more than 20 percent of
my time meeting customers, many of whom are world leaders. These interactions made me
realize that the steps taken by us though important, were baby steps. We also realized
that to be in the league of world-class organizations, a compliance-driven quality culture
like ISO 9000 would prove woefully inadequate.
We asked ourselves, who does it better than
us? We spent time and money in getting a first-hand feel of how companies like GE, Xerox,
Matsushita, Motorola, and Texas Instruments have gone about quality. We found that the
difference is in both the rigor and the level of contextual understanding. We were far
behind the world leaders in both. The introspection led us to raise the bar. We went ahead
and signed up with Motorola University in Chicago, bought the intellectual property for
Motorola's Six Sigma approach to Total Quality Management and created a six-year rollout
that will take Wipro's five businesses to Six Sigma level by the year 2002.
Six Sigma is a tough process. It is about
stretching top management to the hilt. It is accelerating the process of questioning
status quo in everything we do. In the process, it surfaces gaps in the most uncomfortable
spots. However, what makes this journey worthwhile is that we discover these gaps, before
our customers do.
We are happy that we chose. It is a
hard-driving, highly measurable, project-based approach. According to three things are
important-defects, cycle-time, and team. Focus on these, and you are on your way to usher
quality in your organization. The way, however, never ends because the destination is a
moving target. But it is better to be on your way than be wayward or, waylaid.
Innovation
Let us now talk about innovation. Although by Indian standards, we are quite innovative,
we still have some distance to cover if compared to international standards. We have
innovated strongly enough to become a Rs 1,800-crore corporation, slotted among India's
top 50 and operating in five diversified business segments. If we had not, we would
probably still have our presence only in the markets where we began our humble journey in
the year of India's Independence. We are very proud to be in the customer care business,
where we compete shoulder to shoulder with MNCs and enjoy leadership in select product
segments and geographies.
So what helped Wipro grow in non-organic
areas? What made us bring out one great product after another in a closed economy and
eventually making us the # 1 computer company in the country? What gave us the ability to
create the most successful R&D that runs as a profit center with a thousand people?
What made us the second largest software exporter in India? It was the ability to
innovate-both in technology and through managerial competencies. Yet, that ability looks
inadequate in the face of the future.
At Wipro, we have a fair idea of how to
manage innovation through insight. The future will increasingly demand that we manage it
as a science. There are companies that do it. Even though the prophets of unlicensed
creativity say otherwise. Toyota, HP, Xerox, and 3M do not get innovative products and
service concepts delivered with their morning papers. Management of these companies work
hard to create conditions in which people deliver innovation, get measured and rewarded
for it.
Integrity
Brand, quality, and innovation are critical. So is integrity. At Wipro, we regard
integrity as a bedrock. We have built our institution so strongly that integrity is
completely internalized. Many a times, one hears a debate on whether values make business
sense or they come in the way of profitability. My personal experiences have borne out the
fact that value-based business is profitable. It is possible to combine values and
business leadership even in the trying times of today. We see the need to continually
articulate the importance of values and audit where we stand as a team through formal,
periodic surveys, but we do not see the need for internally 'selling' the concept any
more.
We have completely internalized value-based
behavior. On brand, quality, and innovation, we are on our way. I am convinced that
mastering these four areas, alongwith some hard work, is the only way that can make an
organization stand confidently to the future.