India Shining and its Global Impact

Anand Mahindra, president of CII narrates this wonderful anecdote about the

last trip of a high level political and business delegation to Europe, where the

German minister, hosting the delegation, was all set to offer the usual

pleasantries and platitudes before seeing off what he felt was one more Indian

delegation with little to offer but conversation.

Imagine his surprise when the leader of the Indian delegation talked about

the prime purpose of the visit — to explore opportunities to invest in Germany

and compare it with opportunities in other parts of Europe and the United

States! The minister not only awakened in a hurry, but also spent the next hour

or so in a "pull out all the stops" sales plug for Germany as the best

destination for Indian investment.

Ganesh Natarajan Indian IT, pharma and manufacturing are today being seen as a major threat to some of the established economic powers

From being perceived as the begging bowl of the world, Indian IT,

pharmaceuticals and manufacturing are today being seen as a major threat to some

of the established economic powers.

And for those Cassandras, who point to the outsourcing backlash and predict

doom and gloom for the industry, there can be no sharper wake up call than the

strong voices of US CEOs as they fight the outsourcing battle with their vote

seeking political masters and threaten to stop donations to the Democrats if

they do not tone down their outsourcing rhetoric.

What I found even more encouraging in recent meetings with American and

European clients was the sagacity of many second-generation outsourcers, who

have successfully applied their applications management experience to chart out

innovative approaches to Business Process Outsourcing. There is a clear

realization that just moving existing jobs and functions offshore may result in

some early cost reduction benefits, but with the problems of attrition and wage

increases, the cost reduction can quickly evaporate and fail to realize long

lasting value. The solution lies in what many next wave BPO consultants have

called BPOO — Business Process Optimization and Outsourcing, which advocates a

virtuous cycle of process improvement, technology innovation and offshore

outsourcing as the way to look at getting maximum value.        

Business Process Optimization and Outsourcing (what our teams call BPO

Square) has the potential to transform not just processes but also mindsets when

it comes to selling the India story because it moves the conversation from cheap

labor and low wage body shops to true consulting and value creation for global

customers and shareholders. Our experiments in India with a group of CIOs and

human resource chiefs of large organizations in Western India has shown that the

same principles can be applied to the management of human resources as well by

outsourcing all HR transactions to a shared services center that can take over

the soup to nuts of managing the HR function and add tremendous value in the

form of e-learning and knowledge management support that enables CEOs to plan

and track the skills upgrade and career enhancement paths for thousands of

employees and provide them knowledge on tap to move their productivity graph

northwards on an ongoing basis.

The time has never been so ripe for Indian innovation to take center stage

and downplay the job migration side of the story by emphasizing value kickers

that will not only attract more customers but also keep the Indian industry a

few leaps ahead of other offshore wannabes like the Philippines and China. And

in the meantime, we will continue to fence our borders against the threats of

legislation and backlash from various countries, look immigration officials in

the eye and talk about the value being created by Indian companies abroad and

help our brethren in other industries to learn from the success of global IT and

contribute their bit to the "India Shining" story. Its great to be

Indian!

The author is deputy chairman & managing director of Zensar Technologies

and chairman of Nasscom’s SME Forum for Western India

Ganesh Natrajan