It’s just a wake up call for the IT industry

It would be pessimist and unfair to assume that we could no longer be the greatest providers of outsourced software services for the world. The industry simply needs to evolve to grow into a bigger industry with larger targets. At the same time, the country needs to prepare as a whole to provide an appreciable environment to overseas customers.

The country is fretting over what seems to be a not-so-bright-future for the Indian IT industry. For those making the bucks, India’s fairytale story can’t seem to go bust so soon. And it might not. Yes, the IT industry is being met with serious challenges that it needs to address immediately. But the good news is there is still a chance and all we need is to prepare for the future. Going by the past trends, the IT industry has always seen it ups and downs. Concluding anything on the Indian IT ITeS industry would be premature. A recent interview with NASSCOM president Som Mittal, in which he stated that the IT sector expects to meet or even exceed its software export target of $ 60 billion and overall software and services revenue goal of $ 73-75 billion by 2010. So dismissing these numbers would not be appropriate.

However there are surly certain issues that require a thought or considerations. On the surface, there seems to be a downturn in India’s bright and booming IT industry. To start with, there is the appreciating rupee against the Dollar. The Indian rupee has strengthened 15% against the Dollar the last one year. But America being the primary provider of outsourced business to India’s IT companies, their dipping economy fares trouble for companies here.

Another twist to this tale is the reduced spending on IT services by American companies as their economy slows down. Not only has this caused a drop in the rate of salary hikes and hiring, American firms are also passing on and creating lesser work for Indian’s IT companies. As the bulk of work lessens, India being the largest provider of low-cost outsourced services, the impact is reflected surely and poorly.

As Infosys Chief Mentor and Non-Executive Chairman Narayan Murthy has constantly pointed out, another bottleneck the Indian IT space faces is India’s clogged infrastructure. Any foreigner, who steps down at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi or the Bengaluru International Airport for the first time, will not get the best first impression. For a country that opened its doors for other countries almost a decade back, there is poor development.

Our airports need serious makeovers. Let’s hope the new ones will provide the extraordinary experience that a visitor deserves. If you walk down the road from Bangalore’s airport to the city’s best-known hotel Leela, the traffic and pollution are stifling. Similarly, if you land at Delhi or Mumbai’s international airports, there is nothing welcoming about them yet. The efforts are on, but it needs speed and urgency. Or we are bound to lose work to competitors like China, Eastern Europe and Russia, who not only provide low-cost services but also better propriety. With new fiscal budget awaited in near time I would advocate for policies that would aid to sustain the India IT shining story. The Government will also need to look in continuing the tax holiday to smaller STPs beyond 2009

Competitors are another major threat to Indian’s IT industry. While the industry might not be as organized in countries like Russia and China, they are on their way. And they are also producing quality engineers, comparable to India. Even countries in central Europe are not very far from achieving what we have been bloating over. Emergence of these countries in the IT space has already started impacting our client’s preferences and margins.

India needs to stabilize the way IT firms are working. The talent is there but we still fall short of the demand. If we want to continue supplying work to firms abroad, we need sufficient talent within the nation to meet the demand. Engineers don’t simply need to provide outsourced services that mainly involve testing services. If the industry wants to survive, it will need to train professionals to do substantial tasks that will help firms move up the value chain.

Even companies that are outsourcing work to us now want to pass on more evolved work to India. They will soon be automated and we will be forced to take on other work. We need to prepare our systems and professionals for a future that involves different work like developing systems and solutions for foreign clients including diversifying in the various other geographical regions. Companies like TCS and Infosys have taken the clue and are already undertaking work that will help them grow from a service provider to a policy enhancer with larger foot print. Besides, the kind of outsourcing services we are providing right now might become redundant very soon.

At the same time, despite what the scenario looks like, salaries are being hiked at tremendous rates. Salaries of those higher up in the ranks is soon likely to match of those in the United States. This is not a positive sign for the low-wage advantage that we currently offer. Cost arbitrage may very soon not be considered as a differential factor but a hygiene one.

Fortunately, this is not the end of the story. So far, Indian companies have been providing peripheral work to foreign firms. But times are a changing and any IT firm that wants to keep evolving at the same rate will have to grow to be able to provide higher margin work like consulting. We need to the move up the value chain to sustain the advantage that we are currently offering to the world. In the recent NASSCOM leadership forum there was a great talk or recommendation to the India IT ITeS company to move up the value chain to sustain the competitive advantage.

With annual growth rates of nearly 30% in the past ten years, Indian IT industry has been resting in peace. We have provided a bulk of talent and spearheaded some of the greatest software development any country has provided. The stats for future does looks encouraging provided the industry works together to over come the hurdle to reverse the IT down turn. It’s time to gear up. If we don’t change, and fast, we may very well be headed for a fall.

The fundamental business model of Indian IT industry of earn is $$ dollar and spend in rupees would prevail in the coming years with amendments of Earn in Yen, Euro, Pound, Dollar…..and spend in Rupees based upon cohort effort of the industry and industry + government.

Sphere: Related Content

How to Get Prospects to Choose You

Market Your Business Like a Bottle of Pomegranate Juice

by Financial Advisor Coach, Jim Dew MBA, ChFC

Do you own a business like the financial-adviser industry where …

• We all sell the same products. 
• We all sell them for the same price. 
• We all offer our clients good service. 
• We all have a good handle on how to help our clients best.

So how do we get a prospect to choose us over someone else?

How to Get Prospects to Choose You

Well, we can all take a great lesson from how billionaires Stewart and Lynda Resnick marketed over 100 acres of unwanted pomegranates.  All the way up to 2002, pomegranates were rarely eaten in the US.  Less than one in 20 people had ever bought a pomegranate, and most of those people used them for decorations instead of eating them.

So the Resnicks had a problem ...

they had lots of a fruit that very few people wanted. 

So what did they do? 

They created a fantastic USP. 

Five years ago, they began selling their pomegranates as juice in unique double-bulb bottles, at four dollars a bottle.  It was a smash hit! They took a fruit from utter obscurity to charging four dollars a bottle and had people buying it by the case.

How?

They simply did their homework.  They framed the pomegranate juice as the healthiest drink available to the US public.  I don't know if you've tasted it, but the stuff is awful.

The Resnicks flooded the market with information about how healthy pomegranate juice is.  It cures heart disease, ED and more. You name it. Pomegranates cure it.  It became the new, must-have "super food." 

So what can you learn from this example?

Go out and give advice that is the completely opposite of what everyone else is providing in your industry?  Yes, if you can.

Unfortunately, that is probably not an option.

For example, the advice the financial industry gives is generally very good advice.  But let's think about this for a second.  All fruits are good for you.  You can find the "super food" characteristics in any type of fruit.  All the Resnicks did with pomegranates was showcase its particular attributes, versus trying to be the "me too" of fruits.
So, here’s what you should be doing now.

How to Find Your Unique Selling Proposition

You need to find the thing that makes you better than your competitors. For example, if you’re a financial planner …

• Maybe you are an expert on "green" funds. 
• Maybe you're an expert on the stocks of companies ran by women. 
• Maybe you understand the need for financial planning for families with special needs.
• Maybe you are an expert on the retirement plans of a large corporation in your city. 
• Maybe you're an expert on Medicare part D.

There's a high likelihood that you are already an expert on a particular topic.  You may not require a whole heck of a lot more research than you've already done.  Sit down and figure out what it is that you know more about, than your competition.

It doesn't matter what it is, just become an expert. 

Three Ways to Become an Expert and Gain Instant Celebrity Status

1. Write articles and submit them to targeted print and online publications. For submitting articles to the top websites, ezines and article directories, I use PR Leads Article Marketing Experts. They also have a great A to Z product that will teach you how to write articles at www.BroadcastYourArticles.com.  

1. Issue press releases to your local papers, radio and TV stations. You can also submit press releases online using services like PublicRelationsSoftware.com.
2. Make sure groups that may be interested in your expertise know that you and your expertise exist.

By being the expert on any issue, you tell your prospects that you are different from your competition.  You give both your clients and prospects something to hold onto—a handhold that describes who you are as a financial planner.

Your Next Steps

Take a hard look at your practice and ask yourself the question, "Why would someone work with me, versus my competitor?" 

If you don't have a very specific answer to this question, you are doomed to mediocrity.  You are always going to be looking for your next client.  You're always going to be spending money on marketing.  You're always going to be losing some of your clients to competitors.

The only way off the gerbil wheel is to become an expert.  When you are an expert, people seek you out rather than you endlessly seeking them out. 

Don’t you think it’s time to make yourself into an expert so you can lock-in your difference and bury your competition?

About the Author
By becoming an expert, Top Financial Advisor Coach, Jim Dew MBA, ChFC, made over $3MM last year helping financial advisors just like you grow their businesses exponentially. Now, you can take his free quiz and receive an individualized report back within 24 hours detailing your strengths and weaknesses.  Then use this report to boost your marketing and profitability to the next level.  Take the quiz now at http://www.300financial.com. 

Courtesy - Expert Access

Sphere: Related Content

India Inc Grows Socially Responsible

Corporate Social Responsibility has grown from mere debate to concrete actions on the part of Indian companies. While many are still vacillating between to do or not to do, numerous corporate are willing to give back to society

Every organization has an impact on the society and the environment through its operations, products and services. Also through its interaction with the key stakeholder groups including employees, customers or clients, investors, suppliers and the local community. There was a point in time when emphasis was given to the purely economic aspects of any activity being carried out. But now, issues like environment, ethics and society are given equal emphasis by India Inc.

At the same time, it stands true that it will take a while for many organizations to equate Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) with value creation. It’s a continuing debate that can continue for as long as one wants. The proponents as well as the critics of CSR are unyielding. The good news is, things are taking a turn for the better.

A growing number of commercial profit makers, who are adding to corporate trash everyday, accept that they can and should manage their social and environmental impacts in ways that benefit both the organization and the wider society. According to N. R. Murthy, non-executive chairman and chief mentor of IT firm Infosys, “Corporate Social Responsibility is really about ensuring that the company can grow on a sustainable basis, while ensuring fairness to all stakeholders”.

Corporate India has done it in different forms. A cement factory in Southern Gujarat planted numerous seedlings atop its chimneys to reduce pollution. This was decades ago. CSR has turned a whole new leaf since. The latest entrants to India Inc., IT companies are also hopping onto the virtuous model. Cincom Systems, for instance, runs an iMAD program with an NGO named Society for Rural Urban & Tribal Initiative (SRUTI).

Talking about iMAD, or I Made a Difference, Cincom director Pantulu Avasarala says, “This association will help both organizations to work closely for the betterment of the society and sustain community empowerment. We accentuate the power of helping others internal or external to the company”. As part of this initiative, Cincom has already donated 15 computers to schools operated by SRUTI for underprivileged children living in slums and backward areas.

According to a study released by Oracle Corporation and the Economist Intelligence Unit, 85 percent of executives and investors rank corporate responsibility as a central consideration in investment decisions. This trend, it said, is being driven by factors like the erosion of trust in large corporations, the globalization of business, the corporate-governance movement, the rise in importance of socially responsible funds and sheer competitive pressures. The last factor, however, does not necessarily imply that firms emphasizing Corporate Responsibility will beat the competition.

CSR brings about intangible benefits such as brand value and greater investor confidence. But one cannot measure what benefits it adds to the balance sheet. On the contrary, there are costs associated with CSR that can very well be calculated. Reports say that a full-fledged Corporate Responsibility program at a large multinational can cost tens of millions of dollars, or as much as 2% of total revenue.

It is often believed that evolved economies have moved the more polluted industries to parts of the world where environmental and social standards are less stringent. Simultaneously, enthusiastic supporters of free markets debate that an organization should not turn away from its primary goal which is responsibility to shareholders and so they should not be thinking of wider good but should think only about their profits.

In his book Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman argues that, “there is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.”

Critics feel that advocates of CSR are wrong in implying that there is something shameful about companies making profits. They feel the conviction that redemption lies only in these companies also being a moral “corporate citizen”, is incorrect. They propound that CSR moves companies away from their primary aim of making profits, throwing global capitalism out of gear with increased regulation and sundry costs to eventually burden stakeholders worldwide.

Corporate Responsibility is difficult to pin down in a company’s growth cycle, more so because it costs a bomb and there don’t seem any immediate returns. This could also explain why the most important stakeholders, after customers, are the traditionally important employees and shareholders.

With no real studies conducted on CSR, it is also difficult to notify exactly what standards a company should follow and how far they should go beyond the laws to claim beneficiaries to the society. What we really mean by “responsibility” is still under debate. There lies the biggest problem. It’s at the discretion of companies what they want to do and how they want to go about this intangible mode of value creation. Or if they care to venture there at all.

The punch of the debate is that the negative effects industries have on the environment we breathe in cannot be denied. It is true that they are constantly depleting natural resources and contributing to environmental hazards like pollution and global warming. Fossil fuels are said to contribute to global warming, and there is both governmental and societal pressure on corporations to adhere to stricter environmental standards. It might as well that they give back to the environment in some form. Fortunately, there is no denying that CSR has become an important issue facing the global business community and one that promises to grow in importance over the coming years.

While it is fair to say that unnecessary intrusion into a corporate’s working can harm the benefits it accrues to society by means of wealth creation, it is also true that companies need to return something as an entity by itself. Companies have long been criticized for the disruption they cause to the environment. It is time they value what they have and give back to society, some bit in return

Sphere: Related Content

Cincom Delivers Suite for Customer Experience Management

If you will pardon me for bragging just a bit on one of the products that I work on, Ventana Research has just released a review of Cincom Synchrony. This is the latest in a string of positive awards and reviews that at least give me personal satisfaction that we are providing a solution that improves the experience for customers who connect with contact centers using our offering.

Ventana Research reported: At the heart of Synchrony is what Cincom calls a unified agent desktop. Its basic function is to bring all applications into a single desktop.

Cincom's Unified Agent Desktop saves agents from having to sign on separately to multiple applications and from manually navigating through menus or across applications. By hiding these interfaces, smart tabs and resource links allow agents to concentrate more on their jobs.

To read the full Ventana report on how Cincom Synchrony makes it easier for contact center agents to serve customer needs and to deliver a better customer experience -- click here.

To see first-hand how Synchrony enables agents to improve contact center productivity.

If you would like to receive some of the marketing campaigns I help create for Synchrony, send me an email and I will put you on our list.

By Dale Wolf, Perfect CEM

Technorati Tags: contact center,Customer Experience,unified agent desktop,Ventana Research

Sphere: Related Content

It’s just a wake up call for the IT industry

It would be pessimist and unfair to assume that we could no longer be the greatest providers of outsourced software services for the world. The industry simply needs to evolve to grow into a bigger industry with larger targets. At the same time, the country needs to prepare as a whole to provide an appreciable environment to overseas customers.

The country is fretting over what seems to be a not-so-bright-future for the Indian IT industry. For those making the bucks, India’s fairytale story can’t seem to go bust so soon. And it might not. Yes, the IT industry is being met with serious challenges that it needs to address immediately. But the good news is there is still a chance and all we need is to prepare for the future. Going by the past trends, the IT industry has always seen it ups and downs. Concluding anything on the Indian IT | ITeS industry would be premature. A recent interview with NASSCOM president Som Mittal, in which he stated that the IT sector expects to meet or even exceed its software export target of $ 60 billion and overall software and services revenue goal of $ 73-75 billion by 2010. So dismissing these numbers would not be appropriate.

However there are surly certain issues that require a thought or considerations. On the surface, there seems to be a downturn in India’s bright and booming IT industry. To start with, there is the appreciating rupee against the Dollar. The Indian rupee has strengthened 15% against the Dollar the last one year. But America being the primary provider of outsourced business to India’s IT companies, their dipping economy fares trouble for companies here.

Another twist to this tale is the reduced spending on IT services by American companies as their economy slows down. Not only has this caused a drop in the rate of salary hikes and hiring, American firms are also passing on and creating lesser work for Indian’s IT companies. As the bulk of work lessens, India being the largest provider of low-cost outsourced services, the impact is reflected surely and poorly.

As Infosys Chief Mentor and Non-Executive Chairman Narayan Murthy has constantly pointed out, another bottleneck the Indian IT space faces is India’s clogged infrastructure. Any foreigner, who steps down at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi or the Bengaluru International Airport for the first time, will not get the best first impression. For a country that opened its doors for other countries almost a decade back, there is poor development.

Our airports need serious makeovers. Let’s hope the new ones will provide the extraordinary experience that a visitor deserves. If you walk down the road from Bangalore’s airport to the city’s best-known hotel Leela, the traffic and pollution are stifling. Similarly, if you land at Delhi or Mumbai’s international airports, there is nothing welcoming about them yet. The efforts are on, but it needs speed and urgency. Or we are bound to lose work to competitors like China, Eastern Europe and Russia, who not only provide low-cost services but also better propriety. With new fiscal budget awaited in near time I would advocate for policies that would aid to sustain the India IT shining story. The Government will also need to look in continuing the tax holiday to smaller STPs beyond 2009

Competitors are another major threat to Indian’s IT industry. While the industry might not be as organized in countries like Russia and China, they are on their way. And they are also producing quality engineers, comparable to India. Even countries in central Europe are not very far from achieving what we have been bloating over. Emergence of these countries in the IT space has already started impacting our client’s preferences and margins.

India needs to stabilize the way IT firms are working. The talent is there but we still fall short of the demand. If we want to continue supplying work to firms abroad, we need sufficient talent within the nation to meet the demand. Engineers don’t simply need to provide outsourced services that mainly involve testing services. If the industry wants to survive, it will need to train professionals to do substantial tasks that will help firms move up the value chain.

Even companies that are outsourcing work to us now want to pass on more evolved work to India. They will soon be automated and we will be forced to take on other work. We need to prepare our systems and professionals for a future that involves different work like developing systems and solutions for foreign clients including diversifying in the various other geographical regions. Companies like TCS and Infosys have taken the clue and are already undertaking work that will help them grow from a service provider to a policy enhancer with larger foot print. Besides, the kind of outsourcing services we are providing right now might become redundant very soon.

At the same time, despite what the scenario looks like, salaries are being hiked at tremendous rates. Salaries of those higher up in the ranks is soon likely to match of those in the United States. This is not a positive sign for the low-wage advantage that we currently offer. Cost arbitrage may very soon not be considered as a differential factor but a hygiene one.

Fortunately, this is not the end of the story. So far, Indian companies have been providing peripheral work to foreign firms. But times are a changing and any IT firm that wants to keep evolving at the same rate will have to grow to be able to provide higher margin work like consulting. We need to the move up the value chain to sustain the advantage that we are currently offering to the world. In the recent NASSCOM leadership forum there was a great talk or recommendation to the India IT | ITeS company to move up the value chain to sustain the competitive advantage.

With annual growth rates of nearly 30% in the past ten years, Indian IT industry has been resting in peace. We have provided a bulk of talent and spearheaded some of the greatest software development any country has provided. The stats for future does looks encouraging provided the industry works together to over come the hurdle to reverse the IT down turn. It’s time to gear up. If we don’t change, and fast, we may very well be headed for a fall.

The fundamental business model of Indian IT industry of earn is $$ dollar and spend in rupees would prevail in the coming years with amendments of Earn in Yen, Euro, Pound, Dollar…..and spend in Rupees based upon cohort effort of the industry and industry + government.

Sphere: Related Content

Business Intelligence - Business Growth Enabler

The BI space in India is witnessing an interesting change. In addition to the conventional industries that are heavy users of BI technology (i.e. IT, banking, telecom and manufacturing), new areas such as retail and financial services are also keen to adopt BI. In fact, today we find several small and mid-sized retailers, brokerage firms, pharmaceutical companies, and financial services companies, evaluating BI needs for their operations. This apart, the market is also expanding to Government agencies that have now started adopting BI to manage spend, gain visibility into progress made and tracking internal processes and performances—all aimed at serving citizens better, cutting costs and exceeding organizational goals.

Gartner predicts Business Intelligence (BI) software revenue for the Asia-Pacific region to reach $399 million this year, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.5 percent to hit $577.6 million in 2011. India has been the fastest growing BI platforms market in Asia (including Japan). It posted a growth of 35.6 percent in 2005-06—from $12.1 million in 2005 to reach $16.4 million in 2006. All these figures are indicative of the significance of BI for organizations across sectors.

Moreover, in recent years, companies have invested in transactional systems like ERP, CRM, HCM and SCM—to run various parts of the business. These systems generate and capture enormous amounts of data, creating an opportunity for greater insight into business performance.

George Varghese, General Manager, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) and BI, Oracle India, revealed that BI is regarded as the number one priority for CIOs across Asia Pacific as BI and EPM enables the management to link strategy to plans and execution, monitor financial and operational results against goals, and apply analytics to drive enterprise-wide performance improvement.

SMBs too produce tons of data, but lack the kind of analytic capabilities that would enable them to use data to make decisions, and they are hunting for affordable BI.

BI trends

From a trends perspective, organizations today are looking to institute more reliable and accurate processes for monitoring and managing performance both from a strategic and an operational perspective. IDC observes that successful implementations of business performance management (BPM) solutions such as consolidation and budgeting also include a robust BI strategy to integrate and deliver quality information.

Joyer Mascarenhas, VP, Asia Pacific and Japan Professional Services, Cognos stated, “One cannot deliver full BPM solutions without BI, and SOA is an underlying technology through which BPM is delivered seamlessly to the user community. This makes BI a crucial component in BPM and SOA.”

Pallavi Kathuria, Director, Server Business Group, Microsoft India, revealed another interesting market trend for reasons like faster decision-making and better performance management—organizations are making appropriate business data available and visible to all employees at every level rather than just the top management. Therefore, today BI deployments and usage is spreading broadly across organizations rather than being restricted to the top management.

Solution-based focus

Organizations also find it problematic to deal with different vendors, consequently the latter are moving from tools-based focus to a solutions-based focus.

M&A in the BI product space may make companies align with specific tools and technologies. The main reason behind this is that companies may want to align with the product vendor’s BI vision to get ample vendor support in product upgrades, product enhancement and availability of trained resources to implement the solutions. “However, there will continue to be companies who will support best of breed BI architecture to make the most of the individual strength of specific point BI tools for reporting, data integration, analytics, mining and making scorecards,” stated Ramanan R V, Head of Global Delivery and Chief Software Architect, Hexaware Technologies.

Ashit Panjwani, Director-Marketing, SAS India mentioned that CIOs today prefer to purchase their BI solution from an independent vendor and not an application or database vendor. He said, “Customers have multiple ERP systems and warehouses like SAP, Oracle E-Business, JD Edwards, Siebel, Peoplesoft, Microsoft, IBM, and Teradata, and they have other data sources such as XML, Excel, and blogs. They also have a mixed bag of infrastructure like portals, security systems and application servers and as they acquire and merge with other companies these scenarios become even more complex. Customers need an independent performance layer that fits into their enterprise infrastructure and that sits on top of all of their applications and data sources.”

Courtesy -  Vinita Gupta, Express Computer

Sphere: Related Content