The Supply Chain for the Future

So this year's Top 20 exercise is a toast to growth, again. For both
exports and the India market.

But there's another side. Take the exports area that's two-thirds of
India's $28.5 bn IT industry (2004-05: Dataquest). This largely services
industry is headcount-driven. It's linear. If you want a billion dollars, you
divide that by, say, Rs 18 lakh to count the heads you need.

The supply side says: that won't work forever. The industry wants to get to
$50 bn in services exports by 2008. That's 1.2 mn qualified people. Nasscom
projects annual supply at 180K.

But we haven't counted the domestic market. Even at a modest 30% share of
the industry, it will be $20 bn; and though half will be hardware, we need the
heads to sell, deploy, maintain and use it. And domestic services will be most
of the other half. Lower rupee billings make that a half million people! But if
everyone goes off into services exports-where will they come from?

So, go non-linear. How? Forays into high-value areas, from design services to
consulting, have so far been too small to make a dent.

All this was much debated at Nasscom's July HR Summit in Chennai. The
debate was pepped up by the "suppliers": academia, with its strong
views. For instance: what's industry doing to develop future talent? It comes
in on 'day one' to pick up top talent, or, perhaps, a company sponsors five
students, to absorb them two years later...

"What more can we do?" Maybe, identify areas needed to scale up in
value tomorrow-and support and guide education into that direction. Such as
skills and domains for higher-value services. Companies do work with colleges-but
for on their own HR/market/ecosystem development. That's okay, but it
basically adds to today's numbers on the linear scale. We need future
tech/domain/skill training, and influence on the curricula (and support so that
the best people don't run away from teaching). Software veteran FC Kohli took
up the cause of chip design, because the number of graduates in that area was
tiny, impeding growth. There are too few such examples. Nasscom also suggests
software courses in arts curricula. Such efforts can help introduce expand and
develop the "supply chain" for five years later.

When our channel publications conduct forums for resellers moving to
services, the discussion again veers to HR. Where do I get qualified people? How
on earth do I retain them, especially after spending on their training? How do I
retrain my senior people? How about myself?

After G, there's H. HR, the last frontier for Growth. And not just for
services exports. Vendors, SIs, dealers, and users will struggle with workforce
issues. And this demands industry collaboration today-for the future.

Prasanto K Roy