The premise of utilizing software robots running on virtual machines has become more of a reality than you might think. As seen in the print edition of The Economist and also discussed during last week’s HfS webinar, the attraction of employing robots is on the rise and HfS Research is paying attention…
And over at dreamSource, where 48% of the buyers have experienced strategic skills becoming more important than tactical skills for managing their outsourcing engagements, since they embarked on their initiative…
Rajesh Bhutani (Coventry Healthcare) and Debbie Polishook (Accenture)
Afraid of no processes: Genpact's solution head Shantanu Ghosh
Anyone close to business services over the last decade would have crossed paths with one little guy with a huge brain: Genpact’s Shantanu Ghosh. While everyone is familiar with Genpact’s current CEO NV “Tiger” Tyagarajan, and retired former CEO, Pramod Bhasin, Shantanu has frequently been the guy cobbling together the internal teams and the solutions to make it all happen.
I have had many conversations with Shantanu over the years and each time I have come away inspired by someone who is so intimately involved with so many clients and issues in the process delivery industry – he really lives and breathes this stuff.
So when we had the chance to hear his inner-most thoughts on the future drection of the services business, we couldn’t resist sharing them with you…
Phil Fersht (HfS): Shantanu, you’ve been one of the brains behind Genpact’s rise to the pinnacle of the BPO industry in the last few years. Please tell us a little about your background and how you got into this business. Did you always want to be a process guy?
Shantanu Ghosh (Genpact): Thank you very much for saying that Genpact has reached some stage in the BPO business. My background is that of a functional finance expert. I spent my early years in accounting at Pricewaterhouse, then a decade with Unilever in various functional finance roles. Then I spent five years with GE, first at the business level and then at the corporate country level as the CFO. I had reached a stage in my career where I had done the whole functional side of the game, and I wanted really to drive a business. Genpact at that time was just contemplating becoming an independent commercial BPO organization, and moving to the company has provided a huge opportunity for me to come and grow the finance and accounting service line as a general manager. My belief was that in early 2005 the BPO industry was at the cusp of a breakthrough and I wanted to be part of the action. Also Genpact provided an unique opportunity for paid entrepreneur ism.
Phil: You talk a lot about performance enhancement at the enterprise process level, and it sounds very impressive. But what do you really mean, and is it something realistic to which many of today’s businesses can aspire?
Shantanu: Phil, our fundamental belief is that that all enterprises are basically a conglomeration of different value creation processes. Source to pay, record to report and order to cash, the supply chain processes, customer acquisition, the claims process in insurance, etc.
I think the way businesses compete are on the strength of their products and the strength of their operating performance. And operating performance is a direct function of how well those end-to-end processes run. There is a lot of empirical proof on that area. I do think performance enhancement at the enterprise process level is something realistic to which businesses can aspire to. If you look at moves toward global business services for back-room processes, if you look at what people have done with manufacturing processes…clearly there is an increasing awareness, understanding and intent to drive process performance to a level where it becomes a competitive differentiator.
Phil: The operational challenge behind finding these new thresholds of performance, about shifting the corporate mindset from one of cost to one of value, is something a lot companies claim is their biggest challenge today. How do you think clients can learn from past experiences and start to offer best practices to others?
Shantanu: The performance of different enterprises in this area varies significantly. It’s obviously far easier to focus on cost, and much tougher to focus on the other dimension of performance which is value or effectiveness.
In terms of best practices, a value-driven model needs three primary things. First, the tone must be set at the top. Value is often driven between different functional silos across the value chain, and it’s very hard to achieve that with a bottom-up traditonal budgeting approach. Second, you need to create an empowered organization that can look at driving value across end-to-end enterprise processes … As evident by the increasing trend of Global Business service groups. Many organisations have tried to do this in their existing federated, siloed organizational model, and that obviously produces muted or mixed results. Third, value creation is not one shot process, it is a long-term, multi-year journey that includes being able to understand where one’s performance is, being able to objectively compare it and benchmark it against others, being able to create a roadmap consistent with organisational constraints of money and leadership bandwidth and change appetite, and then having the tenacity to walk on that roadmap.
Phil: Can you give us some examples of failures?
Shantanu: Many of the failures are when there has been a one-dimensional view of how can I get the most efficient, both in terms of cost as well as maybe cycle time and all, without actually being clear on the desired business value or business impact.
A classic simple example on this is in the collections or order to cash area. If you only optimize on the dimension of cost, you will try to maximum the number of accounts one particular agent can call in a given time frame and the minimise the time needed on each call. Whereas, if you optimize on the option of value, then suddenly you will think about what kind of analytics and technology you can use to try and figure out who to call, when to call, how you take the analytics upstream to ensure you are not on-boarding customers with credit limits issues, or fixing the billing process to eliminate the need for a lot of calls etc. It completely changes the game of how much outstanding debt you have, or how much you have to write off in bad debts and those benefits are order of magnitude higher than just cost. The second most common reason for failure is to underestimate the change management issues… Organisational habits are tough to break and all standardisation and optimisation initially looks like an impediment to flexibility and reduced control for frontline and operating people in the businesses.
Phil: Our research shows that change management is topping enterprises’ agenda in 2013. Why do you think this is? Why do you think so many want to change, but they struggling to put together programs to help themselves? What works or doesn’t work for clients, when we get into these change issues?
Shantanu: I’ll tackle these very interesting questions at two levels, First, why change management tops companies’ agendas today is that they are more looking to drive value rather than only plain vanilla cost reduction. And driving value means cutting through traditional company hierarchies, cutting though traditional organizational models of functional silos. That’s a big change. That’s not the way people are used to working. So the first fundamental barrier to making change happen is the fact that it goes against how people have worked for many years, many decades. The second piece is that driving change requires a burning platform. Many failures we’ve seen are due to the fact that the organization and the leadership team have not been able to either acknowledge or articulate a burning platform for the troops to rally around. Change is always painful. Change means you have to learn new things, you have to do things differently, you have to let go of people, you have to change your ways of working…none of it is easy. And for people to go through that process, you need to believe in something bigger, something better; you need to have a vision that fires you up.
Phil: So… what’s next for Genpact? You’ve made the Winners Circle now – you are one of the big, glitzy, top-tier providers in this space. Are you ready to declare victory and rest on your laurels, or are we going to witness a whole new impetus and focus on where your firm wants to go next?
Shantanu: Phil, we believe that we are just at the start of our journey. We are a small company, just about $2 billion in revenue. We’ve been in the commercial space for less than a decade. We’re in a market and in an industry that is hugely under-penetrated. We have a fundamental belief that this industry will double, triple, quadruple in size over the next few years. We feel very privileged to have had some role in defining the way the industry works, and that we can continue to drive that definition.
Demonstrating flawless execution
There are two aspects we feel very deeply about. One is helping our clients succeed by competing through smarter processes. So, everything we do is focused on how our customers create competitive advantage through the power of their operating model in the marketplace. The second thing we believe is that the market and the industry have really started shifting fundamentally from a pure cost equation to a cost plus value equation. It would be naive to think that the shift has happened significantly. But there is enough evidence for us to be very encouraged that the shift is happening and it’s really one way…it’s not going to change. And we believe we are uniquely positioned to both drive and benefit from that particular shift.
Phil: So the final question… you are awarded $10 million. What will you be doing in six months time?
Shantanu: Well, I’ve had a fabulous eight years in Genpact, but it’s been very busy, so if you give me $10 million, I’ll possibly be on a very expensive long holiday. But seriously…if I had $10 million to invest, there are so many areas of competency that we could invest in to benefit our business and customers. Whether it’s in the Analytics space, or in the regulatory compliance space, given the changes that are happening or twenty other such interesting areas; if I had $10m to experiment with, I would put that into our new products innovation funding in a couple of those areas.
Phil: Hmmmm…. good answer 🙂 Thanks for your time today with our readers, Shantanu. It’s been quite a journey for both you and Genpact and we’ll love to hear more from you further down the road.
Shantanu Ghost (pictured) is Senior Vice President and Global Head, Enterprise Services, Solutions, Transitions and Lean Six Sigma. You can view his full bio here.
As we revealed last week, most of the big analyst personalities have seemingly fled the analyst industry… many for the riches on offer from their vendor clients, clearly seeing more ROI from employing them, as opposed to purchasing their firm’s services. However, this hasn’t prevented the remaining legacy purveyors of analyst services from making a living.
So what’s left in these firms after the rock stars have left the building? Let’s examine the cast of characters that many of us frequently have the good fortune to meet in briefings, conferences, airport lounges, hotel bars, psych wards etc.
Mick Jagger Analysts:
Not all the rock stars fled… some stayed well past their sell-by-dates, clearly not mentally prepared for a foray into the real world. They still drift around analyst firms, making occasional appearances in executive briefing sessions (or sometimes just walking out of them halfway through). Their research productivity is usually about one thought-piece a year, which is usually miles from reality, but everyone tells them their piece was amazingly thought-provoking, having read the first paragraph.
They still show up at the odd vendor analyst conference, where they tend to knock back too much scotch on the first night and spend the next morning sleeping it off in their hotel room before making a token appearance at the one-on-one briefing in the afternoon.
The High Performer Analyst:
A “High Performer” these days is pretty much an analyst who does what he/she is paid to do and actually has some reasonable research to share with the world. They spend a good deal of time conversing with both buyers and vendors and actually cobbling together some genuine research for all to read. Sadly, their wares are normally wedged miles behind some firewall somewhere where noone can find it, even when they’ve paid for it. What’s more, the months it takes to get their research past their internal red tape and editorial teams drives them crazy, and their firms are unlikely going to let them blog (and they get no credits towards their bonus for blogging, in any case, so why do it?). Motivation quickly slips away and their CVs normally slip onto the market after a couple of years.
The Egomaniac Analyst:
Analysts who got their egos stroked and loved it so much, they realized they needed them stroked… every minute of every day. Writing one good piece a quarter wasn’t enough to slake their thirst for praise, so they attempt to hop on every hot area they can and put our some fluffy piece of prose to get attention. Their focus on quality quickly wanes, as having their name in lights, in as many places as possible, trumps all else. After trampling on all their colleagues’ areas and sucking up all their manager’s time in the process, they eventually get booted out and apply for any analyst job they can, as they do not have the real confidence to go it alone. Usually, some analyst firm will pick them up and go through the whole egomaniacal process with them… all over again.
The Spin Doctor Analyst:
Analysts who feel doing actual research is either beneath them, they simply feel no compulsion to do any, or they may not actually know what “doing research” is. Instead, they get their hands on a few reports from others and cobble together their own version of the trends. Good spin doctor analysts can do this very effectively, and very convincingly, leaving the world to believe they grafted long and hard to create this vision, when all they did was spin the ideas and views of others. They frequently offer to “collaborate” with other analysts on reports to create the impression they do some actual research, but in reality just want to slap their name on the report for showing up at a couple of meetings.
Sadly, the average spin doctor doesn’t get away with it for too long (there have been several embarrassing examples of analysts plagiarizing over the years), but many of the good ones build a nice career doing it. Usually they get promoted into practice lead areas, so others can actually do the real work, while the spin doctor can spin their stuff all day long…
The “Annoying and complex Questions” Analyst:
Yes, every conference is never complete without the analyst who just has to chime in with some annoying questions. Frequently, some will start asking a question, but forget the original intent of why they are asking the question, proceeding to drone on for a couple of minutes spouting their views on something that sounds complex and undecipherable to the rest of the audience. Others will launch into some direct questions to probe at the weaknesses of the presenter’s content, which they really should do in private, instead of trying to embarrass the presenter.
These analysts tend to attend every single conference and vendor event imaginable, with the hope that, one day, they will become enlightened and not have to ask a really annoyong question in front of the whole room.
The “Plodder” Analyst:
Sadly, this analyst comprises the good proportion of most analyst houses. Simply put, the plodder isn’t very good, doesn’t rock the boat and drifts along checking the boxes and meeting their firm’s metrics (sound familiar?). He or she smiles politely when spoken to, produce average-to-mediocre research and isn’t going anywhere anytime soon – they simply aren’t very good. They get left largely alone to plod along and keep the machine cranking along.
The “Why on earth are they still Employed” Analyst:
Yes, there’s always a few lurking around. Analysts who are so bad everyone keeps out of their way. They tend to cover boring areas noone cares about and get wheeled out for the occasional client meeting when their area need a “face” tied to it. Their goal in life is to be as invisible as possible and eke out a cosy living until the eventual day they get that call from HR…
The “Drive-by Consultant” Analyst:
Analysts who come from the buy-side and proceed to spend every day talking about “what is was like when they were a CIO” etc. They do not see the need to do any actual research, but will put out a few flashy pieces on the good ol’ days and the incredible best practices they initiated. Typically, the “Drive-by Consultant” Analyst can pull off this game for about three years, whereupon everyone has become tired of the same anecdotes being rolled out. These analysts tend to sneak back to the buy-side at this point, chalking up their three wonderful years of being an “analyst” before re-entering the real world again.
The “Vendor Marketing” Analyst”
Analysts who come from the vendor side, with intimate knowledge how vendor marketers work. They get obsessed with showing up at vendor briefings and writing up little blogs and briefs on what they thought of the occasion. They do all the things to press the buttons of the vendors… little tweets of praise from their events and announcements, blogs (if allowed) of the vendor’s next groundbreaking industry maneuver, and profiles of their favorites. These analysts typically go through a one-to-two year honeymoon of vendor-schmoozing, but quickly get bored of the same dog-and-pony show and start interviewing for their next salary-doubling move… back to the dark side.
The “Screw this, I can do this better Myself” Analyst
Analysts who are typically some hybrid of many of the above, who decide they can walk off into the sunset and set up their own little shop. Some just declare they are a one analyst show, while others put up a facade that they actually have an analyst team. A few do actually have analyst teams, but still can’t resist writing the odd cheeky blog about the analyst industry 🙂
Hear Phil Fersht talking to HR Technology’s godfather, Bill Kutik
Click to listen to the recorded interview on iTunes
You may recall our announcement to the world, over three years ago, revealing the launch of outsourcing analyst firm HfS Research… and we first mentioned this on Bill Kutik’s irreverent radio show.
Tune in to listen to our latest conversation and you’ll hear more about:
The current state of the research business and why recent entrants, such as HfS, are playing with the traditional analysts;
What’s happing in HR Outsourcing, and why it’s becoming more of a niche-process industry today;
Why HR is fast-becoming one of the most dependent business functi0ns of technology to be effective;
Why firms are more likely to do outsourcing in a good economy than a bad one;
HfS’ new Blueprint methodology for assessing vendor performance – and why it’s such a game-changer.
Produced by Knowledge Infusion, an Appirio company, and hosted by independent industry analyst Bill Kutik, selected last year as one of the world’s “Most Powerful HR Technology Experts,” the bi-weekly interview show provides leading HR business content and insight into up-to-the-minute trends.
The premise of utilizing software robots running on virtual machines has become more of a reality than you might think. As seen in the print edition of The Economist and also discussed during last week’s HfS webinar, the attraction of employing robots is on the rise and HfS Research is paying attention…
