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Value Over Volumes

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DQI Bureau
New Update

The annual function of the Confederation of Indian Industry in Pune, titled

‘Making Made in India matter,’ provided a great insight into the current

state of the Indian industry. It also had some important lessons for the Indian

IT sector. In his inimitable style, industry doyen Rahul Bajaj spoke about the

need to make Indian companies globally competitive and said that the great CEOs

of the present troubled times will be those who will rise beyond charisma and

public relations to real performance and shareholder value creation. This is

very true for the IT industry too. The few who have survived the slowdown

holocaust have been oriented towards performance. They will continue to focus in

the same manner in order to succeed in the new financial year and beyond.

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“The realization

that business process transformation and solutions that use IT to address

customer pain points are the real ‘sweet spots’ has driven companies

to explore new areas”

Ganesh

Natarajan

The good news about the year long slowdown that has affected the software

sector is that it dragged many software players, kicking and screaming up the

value chain, a climb that had proved to be elusive during the good years. Today,

our own company prides itself on the work done in knowledge management in

Europe, e-business strategy in Hong Kong, e-learning architecture in the United

States and private banking reengineering in Asia, whereas a year ago we would

have been talking technology like everybody else. It is this realization that

business process transformation and solutions that use IT to address customer

pain points are the real ‘sweet spots’ for the IT industry that has driven

many of us to discover new areas of growth.

Areas that are not only more profitable but also do more credit to the entire

industry, which was in danger of just becoming the low cost back yard of

American and European corporations.

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And therein lies a message for every company that is seeking to emulate a TCS

or Infosys or even an IBM Global Services. Just stop trying to emulate and

discover new ways of understanding and servicing customer needs! Because it is

better to be asked, "Who is your competitor?" than "How are you

different from IBM or TCS?" Another fact that is staring all of us in the

face is the opportunity for Indian infotech and manufacturing firms to

collaborate to develop new value added solutions and use them initially to

improve the competitiveness of the Indian manufacturing sector and eventually as

rugged solutions that could work in any developing country. Why is it that CIOs

from the Indian manufacturing sector insist on getting their companies to pay

for expensive international software which does not get fully implemented and

results in the constant CEO refrain about ‘Money down the drain in information

technology?’ There are many homegrown solutions like the PC-SOFT ERP, the

Synise supply chain suite, Talisma CRM and other excellent products, which have

been developed specifically by, for and with the Indian industry.

Let this not be interpreted as a call for shrink-wrapped software a la Word

and Explorer to be developed by Indian software companies. Our own experience

has shown that India can excel at developing templates that serve 60% of the

generic needs of any banking, manufacturing or retail client, which can then be

customized and implemented at the client’s premises through our proven

services teams. This process of developing solution blueprints and reusable

component libraries can be extended across a range of business applications and

areas like knowledge management and Web services.

At the same CII conference, eminent economist and journalist Ashok Desai

talked about the many lessons that ‘old economy’ firms could learn from the

IT sector — the ability to manage people, the willingness to be globally

competitive without any need for protection and the capability to adapt to

changing environments. While all this is true, there is a lot that many of us in

IT continue to learn from veteran industrialists and businessmen, in India and

abroad who have build industries and businesses over the last few decades. It is

time for the ‘New Economy’ and ‘Old Economy’ divide to be bridged once

and for all and every sector to collaborate to build Indian competitiveness and

success in global markets.

The author is deputy chairman and managing director of Zensar Technologies

and the global CEO of Zensar He can be reached at ganesh@dqindia.com

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