Domain is King!

The National Institute for Industrial Engineering (NITIE), India's premier

in stitution for post graduate management education for engineers has been

organising an extraordinarily popular event called "Lakshya" for the

last five years which showcases the best projects done in the areas of general

management, supply chain management, human resource management and systems and

IT management by the Indian corporate sector-for internal implementation as

well as for external clients. Participating as a member of jury every year has

given me an insight into some cutting edge thinking and work that has gone a

long way towards building Indian capabilities and the India Inc brand in global

markets.

This year, I had the privilege of listening to four excellent presentations

made by professionals working in four software firms. What was exhilarating,

apart from the quality of preparation and presentation that one has come to

expect from young Indians working in this industry was the fact that the award

winning project as well as two of the other three focused on issues that were

beyond brute force technology-the management of knowledge, the understanding

of key inflection points in the retail banking industry and the reengineering of

supply chains in the retail and logistics industry caused by RFID-all these

and more represent the new horizons that we are no longer dreaming of, but

beginning to reach and master.

Ganesh Natarajan The market of the future belongs to firms that can get into the shoes of their customers, understand the concerns and opportunities that confront them and provide end-to-end solutions

This is not an overnight occurrence-the industry has been working on its

domain competence assiduously over the last few years and most significant

companies are today in a position to field a number of consultants who can

discuss customer pain points in addition to the technology intricacies that have

become par for the course. At Zensar, our own retail industry practice today

provides steroids to our horizontal practices ranging from application portfolio

management, application modernization, collaboration, enterprise applications

and business process outsourcing. Today's seasoned industry marketers and

consultants are able to not only appreciate the nuances of merchandise

allocation and assortment planning, but can also build algorithms and optimise

the process of allocation.

One could argue that the industry should not pose as management consultants

and a smattering of experts who can talk the talk would be enough to cover up

for the lack of interest of the knowledge of the vast majority of "techies"

in the nuances of the retail or for that matter, any specific industry. Be

warned-organizations that continue to believe this are living in a fool's

paradise, because the market of the future surely belongs to firms that can get

into the shoes of their customers, understand the concerns and opportunities

that confront them, and provide end-to-end solutions that stay implemented in

the client's organization. This is not to say that technical prowess should be

ignored-that still remains critical, but rigorous training in the domain can

provide the cutting edge that not only wins new projects, but adds the

"stickiness" to any relationship. This is what elevates customer

engagements from opportunistic customer-vendor relationships won usually through

a compelling cost advantage to true partnerships!

In our own country, the sudden surge in prominence of both the manufacturing

and retail industries will provide more opportunities for many engineers who had

been sacrificing all the knowledge provided in their engineering colleges at the

altar of a software career, to rediscover their domain roots and provide the

integration of industry knowledge and technology, first in their own minds and

then in the consultancy projects they execute. Institutions like NITIE, which

have been a little apologetic about their focus on operations and supply chain

management in the face of competition from vanilla but big brand MBA schools,

should realise that it is they who hold the key to the future of the software

industry and will hopefully deepen their focus and provide the industry with

truly "future focused" people!

The author is deputy chairman and managing director of Zensar Technologies

and chairman of Nasscom's SME Forum for Western India Ganesh

Natarajan