‘India’s USP is Trusting Clients’

In
1991, along with Stuart Moore, he pionee-red the concept of the
fixed-price, fixed-time approach to business and technology
consulting. Today, Sapient’s strong workforce of 1,500 consultants
across 14 offices worldwide is helping large MNCs, including Fortune
500 companies, discover and harness all that’s possible in an
increasingly digital, networked world. As joint CEO and chairman of the company’s board,
Jerry A
Greenberg talks about Sapient and the value proposition that
India offers..

l What gave
birth to Sapient?

Research and studies across the globe suggests that large companies, no
matter where they are, struggle hard to get business value from their
investments in technologies; while projects are notoriously late and there is
almost always cost overrun, they do not work well either. We realized the
importance of delivering business and advanced technology solutions that result
in high-value. The recent Scandish Group report that says approximately 60% to
70% of technology initiatives either fail or are very low on quality, validates
our concept. We started this company because we felt we could do better than
that. By offering high quality people with better processes we were certainly in
a better position to help large companies–not only in completing their
projects on time and within the budget, but also getting the intended business
results. While in the 12 years since we launched the company, technology has
changed a lot the business case for our services remains the same.

Jerry A Greenberg

l How would
you describe these changes you talk about?

The changes have almost always been technological. When we first started we
were very good at client-server work–open system, Unix–that soon turned into
a web-enabled; Internet-enabled business environment. However the biggest change
that has happened over the last decade is the ability and opportunity to
collaborate with work teams and take advantage of some of these very high
quality resources on a global basis.

We happen to find India a great place to team up between London, New York,
San Francisco and Delhi. Other people may have different opinions on the best
locations for distribution of work, but the fact is that collaboration has
bought about the biggest change in the way companies would solve their
technology problems. A case in point is in Sapient’s approach–40% or 600 of
our 1,500 people working globally are in India.

l What makes
India so important in Sapient’s scheme of things?

As I said earlier, we try to help big companies deploy technology and
deliver business results more effectively. In doing so, we need hard working,
high-quality trained manpower which this market has in abundance. Also, in
distributing work globally, large companies see the opportunity to get higher
quality at a better total cost. That is a big driving force for us and instead
of limiting ourselves to USA, Canada, Germany or UK, which are our primary
markets, we have been looking at better ways for helping clients solve their
problems faster, better and at a lower cost.

l Isn’t it a
matter of time before India loses its cost advantage?

You are right. We first looked at India way back in 1992. Over the period of
time, the cost difference has indeed narrowed down. However, the commitment to
IT education works very well with our clients on a global basis. That’s the
primary reason for our India focus. One can surely get cheaper manpower in other
parts of the world but the value proposition that India provides is the ‘trust’
of our clients.

l What is your
focus area here?

At the company level, we do three basic things. First, the IT strategy
business through which we help large companies plan their technology investments
and improve their business process and performance. The next is project works,
where specific projects are understood, conceived, designed and implemented. The
third thing that we do is support and maintenance of newer applications.
However, the biggest chunk of our revenue comes from project work and India is a
very strategic investment on that front. In India we are focusing on the project
piece of our business and to a small degree on some IT strategy work. This,
however, does not mean people out here cannot do strategy work. Not much of
strategy work is being done in India because most of such contracts are carried
out on-shore, within the client’s facility.

l Does that
mean you are competing with the likes of EDS, IBM and Accenture?

There may be some commonalties but EDS is more of an outsourcer of
computers, the machines and their maintenance. Off course they have AT Kearney
that does more business strategy and may overlap with our line of business, but
we more likely to partner with EDS than actively compete with them. Accenture
and IBM Global Services, however, are certainly our competitors though these
companies do compete with EDS in their broader business. As far as Sapient is
concerned, we end up competing only with the big five of the global consultants.

SHUBHENDU PARTH