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