Building Greatness

Albert Einstein once said: "Only the insane can expect radically
different outcomes by doing the same thing over and over again." In the
aftermath of the Iraq war, the uncertainties of the SARS outbreak in Asia and
the sudden defacing of the stock market’s poster child–software exports–the
time seems to have come to once again reassess the status and future directions
of the Indian Software industry. And the time has come to take Einstein’s
statement to heart and see whether a new strategy is called for to make the
skies blue and the birds sing again for the software industry.

"In the face of uncertainties, the time has come to reassess the status and future direction of the SW industry" Ganesh Natarajan, CEO, Zensar Technologies

On the face of it, it does seem to be a classic case of market overreaction
all over again to the weak forecasts by industry leaders Infosys and Wipro–all
the more when one considers that even smaller companies have been able to grow
revenues and operating profits and expect to do better, irrespective of the
expected erratic spending patterns of global customers during the current year.

One factor that will determine the sustainability of revenues and success in
the international markets will be the focus on business excellence, which will
be the single feature of all successful companies that dare to operate in a
truly international arena. The recent CII-Exim Award won by Infosys provides
some pointers to what makes a company world-class and what most aspiring firms
can follow to fulfill their own dreams of success in the global software
industry. The award recognizes the balance between an organization’s practices
and performance and suggests nine different criterion for measuring success...

• The role of leadership in developing the mission, vision and values,
  putting in a robust management system, developing a culture of excellence
  and demonstrating involvement with employees, customers, partners and the
  society at large;

• Development of stakeholder-focussed strategy and relevant
  policies, deployed and implemented through a framework of key processes and
  reviewed to ensure that stakeholder expectations are met;

• People development by planning for competencies and
  empowerment;

• Management of internal resources and external
  partnerships to support its policies and strategies and the effective
  operation of its processes;

• Design, management and improvement of processes for
  product and service design and development, and CRM;

• Customer results, including perception and performance
  measures for overall image, products and services, sales and service and
  loyalty;

• People results covering achievement orientation,
  motivation, satisfaction and services provided to the people.

• Society results through its operations–to community
  involvement and corporate citizenship; and

• Key performance results, including financial and
  non-financial outcomes and indicators that measure the progress of the
  organization on factors that can predict and improve the organization’s
  likely performance outcomes.

For regular readers, we will delve deeper into each of these
criteria and draw out the essence of a go-world-class model. But one aspect of
the model, which is the underlying philosophy of business excellence, is the
Radar logic, which is breathtaking in its simplicity and yet comprehensive in
its coverage and applicability to every aspect of building global corporations.
The steps of Radar, namely determination of Results required, planning and
developing key Approaches, Deploying the approach and finally Assessing and
Reviewing the approaches and their deployment, can be applied to the entire
strategy formation and implementation process in any enterprise.

This approach could and should help in the process of
introspection that most organizations are going through in these difficult times
and identify obvious and latent chinks in the organization’s capabilities and
strategies that will generate a priority list of actions for improvement.

Ganesh Natarajan

The author is the CEO of Zensar Technologies