Posted in : OneOffice

Posted in : IT Outsourcing / IT Services, OneOffice

In today’s world of constant fake news it was refreshing to get some real news that literally made me choke on my 57th microwaved frozen chicken jalfrezi of the year.  The fact that this real news emanated from the Daily Mail (the UK equivalent of the New York Post or Air India’s in-flight magazine) was an indicator of how bad today’s media has become.  Also, the fact that my head of marketing actually reads the Daily Mail gives me serious concerns for our 2021 marketing strategy… 

Anyway, let’s get to the point.  Our Chancellor of the Exchequer (CFO for you corporate types), “Dishy” Rishi Sunak is married to the daughter one of India’s IT industry’s founding godfathers, none other than Akshata Murthy, daughter of Narayana Murthy, the man who created Infosys.  Like that happened and no one’s noticed until someone at the Daily Mail discovered this… and they wed in 2009.

The UK is in a mess so bloody big we need to redefine “mess”

If a depression-driven Covid catastrophe wasn’t bad enough, the mother country is going into a catatonic depression so bad, it may lead to an economic fossilization (that is my term for something worse than a depression) when we throw a no-deal Brexit into the mix… due end of 2020.

Anyone observing the thrilling performance of the Indian-heritage service providers this year will observe how the leaders have somehow kept the IT outsourcing industry actually growing a little bit, despite a predicted 8-10% nosedive that analysts many predicted.  And this owes a huge amount to its standout performer of 2020, Infosys, which has chugged along signing megadeals and reinforcing its commitment to the cloud at a time when enterprises are desperate for a partner to help them pivot at breakneck speed into the cloud model.

Anyway, as a disillusioned British born analyst (and global citizen) I suddenly see hope…

I have a lot more faith in these entrepreneurs from Bangalore than the current old-boys network running Her Majesty’s economy into the ground.  I always knew Rishi was the only smart one in there, and now we have the evidence.

So… now good old Infosys has no choice butto bail us out as they married into… the UK!  

I am sure they will appreciate some free advice on the governance team that can drag us quickly out of our current predicament, so here’s an initial strawman architecture:

UK Prime Minister:  Ravi Kumar S.  No one spins it better than old Ravi… all he has to do is bulldoze our media with pics of his new baby girl all over twitter and have us guessing forever on the mysterious “S”…

Chancellor:  Pravin “UB” Rao… this man can keep a ship sailing through any storm.  This current crisis stuff is child’s play compared to rogue CEO’s in private jets and dodgy Israeli automation purchases..

Head of the UK Coronavirus Task Force:  Vishal Sikka… time to dust off the former CEO to convince the UK public that we needn’t worry about Covid as “AI will provide the answer” (after showing up 30 minutes late to every briefing).

Brexit Secretary:  Salil Parekh… who better to carve us out of the EU than the king of the carve-out deal himself?  He’ll even do the deal on the golfcourse showing the rest of Europe how it’s done.

Head of Cybercrime:  Mohit Joshi... who better to arm our cyber-defenses than the man who can iron-wall any bank still running on Cobol mainframes?  Easy, just move all our sensitive data onto Finacle and the Russians and Chinese will go crazy trying to figure out what the hell we just did…

Vaccine Distribution Czar:  Radhakrishnan “Radha” Anantha… who better to command the British vaccination process than InfosysBPM kingpin Radha himself, who will ensure everyone needs to “calm down and just focus on the outcomes”.  If things get a bit dicey, he will take questions from his kitchen where we’ll be far more interested in what on earth his kids are sneaking out of the fridge while he’s too busy talking to us…

But what about Rishi himself?

Oh, he’s far too smart for us.  Can’t you get him to take over from that Modi guy?  Rishi makes money appear from magic, you know?

Posted in : Outsourcing Heros, policy-and-regulations

Today’s environment is based on rapid decisions to move processes and apps into the cloud as fast as possible to keep companies functioning in a remote-working economy.  That means it’s all-hands-on-deck to use all available resources to make this happen as cost-effectively as possible.  The principles of agile development have never been as important.

Cloud computing is basically the Internet being used as the system for delivering processes, software, data, and other services.  Being ‘agile’ means being able to use all resources as and when required. It also means not having to use them when not being used, and not pay for them. So how can we expect today’s service providers adopt agile development to help our enterprises make the leap to the cloud as effectively and rapidly as they can? Let’s ask HFS analyst Martin Gabriel who led the recent Top 10 report in Agile Development Services:

(Click to Enlarge)

(Click to Enlarge)

Martin – why has agile become so talked about in the recent past?  Hasn’t this been around for ages?

Yes, that is very much true. In a nutshell, due to the following reasons, it took center stage – a) Because of the agile success rate in software development space, and b) the traction in organizational agility. It has proved that agile methodology enhances productivity and alpha, and if adopted appropriately, it reduces overall cost over a period of time. The agile concept has come a long way, it has evolved all the way through software development, but now has branched beyond IT and other departments like marketing, legal, HR, and much more. As the concept is getting increasingly popular across business areas, companies have started to witness higher returns because of this. However, this was only feasible because of the embracement it garnered from C-suite members in recent times. That being said, not all big firms embraced it, companies like IBM and GE witnessed a drop in their revenues as per a report on “Market capitalization of big firms.”  On the contrary, firms like Amazon and Microsoft, who adopted agile practices at the top level, have delivered significant results over a period of five years. Companies like Netflix and Spotify were born agile, and they were far from being bureaucratic and hierarchical and are one of the fastest-growing. I believe these are some of the key reasons in recent times it’s been discussed a lot in my perspective.

And has anything changed significantly with the pandemic, or is agile now even more relevant in the current environment?

As we know, agile software development is all about being iterative and collaborative at work. During the pandemic, few agile teams struggled but bounced back faster. But few of them were not doing that well before COVID as well, and the pandemic triggered its downfall too. On the other side, teams that performed well before COVID have developed trust due to the work from home coming in to the play and also plugged mental health management models in the team that shaped them to perform better during the crisis.

While we see this in the organizational perspective, certainly, the pandemic has pushed the organizations to play with an unfamiliar swiftness, and that is how organizational agility became inevitable in today’s environment. Many non-agile organizations adopted agile operating model out of necessity, and it has significantly helped them to cope with the crisis regardless of industries.

With agile operating model adopted completely or partially, companies led with a smooth transition, efficient work management, and met customer needs within set timelines. In fact, within an organization, agile business units performed significantly well than the non-agile business units. We cannot deny the fact that non-agile organizations struggled to manage the remote work environment and resource prioritization.

The Challenge of performing well in crisis with agile models does not end here. The real test will begin when the same organizations who adopted the agile way of working out of emergency might have to figure out the most sustainable model that suits them after things settle down. The current operating model was only developed out of emergency and was not a well-planned one in the long run.  

So, what impressed you – and disappointed you – the most when you conducted the briefings and enterprise reference calls during the recent T10 report? Did you feel the industry has been making a lot of progress with agile or is it more “lip service”, Martin?

What impressed me – Well, I have lot to discuss on this, starting from enterprise adoption rate of the Agile methodology to success rate, client relationship, providers’ willingness to go overboard, and to my surprise, commitment and impressive client relations. This is where some of the mid-tier players were able to demonstrate and deliver better than the tier 1 players – this does not mean that tier 1 players were less impressive or have not wooed their clients. Sometimes the complex management structure takes away the perk and makes it intricate and challenging to achieve desired results faster.

Flexibility, when I say flexibility, here I am talking about the willingness to flex resources if needed, flexible pricing, free hands-on choosing resources for their projects, open environment where developers from providers’ side were able to push back if that’s not the right approach and the willingness to go out of the box rather than sticking only with the contract.

These are some of the positive angles that few providers were able to pull off.

What disappointed me the numbers they gave for their agile resources. While conversing on providers’ strength in their agile practice, it was observed that the numbers of trained agile associates were a little unrealistic. Few providers mentioned more than 80% of their application development work in agile, whereas few of its peers only mentioned around 35%. These numbers lie in two ends and difficult to analyze.

Large organizations are still focusing on pleasing clients instead of being true to the name of agile engagement. Few agile team members were unable to have difficult conversations with their clients, instead, they agreed to every task thrown at them without explaining the challenges behind. In fact, they did not create room to push things back if they were unrealistic.

In my humble opinion, clients are very mature compared to many service providers. They have vast know-how and understand the ground-level challenges and common market problems better and on top of that, they have a willingness to cooperate.

Sometimes, client references given by the providers refuse to participate as there were no prior intimations given. These instances reflect that providers sometimes assume clients are happy and ready to share happy testimonials.

Across providers’ offerings, frameworks, partnership ecosystems, and capabilities are the same. End of the day it’s about customer satisfaction, overall experience, and pricing.

Answering the last part of your question, the Agile model indeed progressed over the years. It has almost replaced the traditional waterfall methodology. The agile failure rate is only 8%. Yes, it has its challenges too. Initial costs, unclear objectives that lead to constant changes, scaling across different teams and locations, resistance to change, and lack of executive support are some of the challenges.

Martin is actually pretty cool you know…

And which providers, Martin – in your view – distinguished themselves the most?  And why?

Infosys, HCL, and Accenture bagged the top 3 ranks in our top 10 studies. Sometimes simple things make a huge difference, and in our agile study, that’s exactly what happened. I reiterate that customer feedback, pricing, and flexibility differentiates providers. Methodology, approach, partnership ecosystem, scale and breadth, IP, and accelerators are very close calls among the top players. It is tough to differentiate for buyers and even me as an analyst. Little you can make difference wherein the thought leadership, investment roadmap, and willingness to go that extra mile is the one that differentiates among the top players. Matter of fact, fourth, fifth, and sixth rank holders were very close to each other. They were equally good in most of the assessed parameters.

As we evolve rapidly into this new hyper-digital environment, how would you like to see agile evolve and a practice?  What is your advice to young professionals in this space? 

Well, agile is not limited to individual teams (say product development team) anymore; embracing the agile practice organization as a whole is the way.

Advice to young professionals – Coders who are developing agile competency will differentiate themselves and have a better advantage over others. Also, we are embracing organizational agility; therefore, an agile foundation or awareness is going to be inevitable.    

Furthermore, some of the skills are often taken casually or being ignored. Agile team members must equally focus on developing soft skills like managing difficult conversations, the ability to present your work to a wider audience if needed. Being a good developer or coder isn’t sufficient anymore. Agile is about constant change and iteration and for that these skills are ideal.

And how would you describe the similarities between agile development and the rapid scaling up investments? How can we use agile to get to our “North Stars” faster these days?

In short, the Agile concept took years to reach where it is today. Even today, some of the top IT service providers agreed that only ~36% of their application development work is in agile. Similarly, scaling up agile has its own challenges. In the past, sr. leaders were very stringent in approving the budget. Last four-five years with proven agile results and an agile mindset, C-Suite members are open to scaling, and the COVID crisis further pushed the process.

Answering your second part of the question. We witnessed results in organizational agility over a period and it’s one of the big fuss in the industry right now. Also, in the recent pandemic, agile organizations were the ones who were able to swiftly move/adapt to the remote workspace than others. Leaving challenges aside, the benefits of organizational agility is faster adoption of changes, capitalization on new trends, and incline towards an innovative firm. I believe, in short, organizational agility is the best way to reach our North Stars, faster. There are a lot of steps and approaches to be followed, that is another discussion altogether.

Premium HFS subscribers can click here to download the Top 10 report in Agile Development Services

Posted in : Agile, Cloud Computing, IT Outsourcing / IT Services, OneOffice

Posted in : OneOffice

One of my oldest blogging sparring partners is the gnostic Vinnie Mirchandani of Deal Architect fame.  We caught up a few days ago to talk about the impact of Covid on the services and outsourcing industry, how to lead through these challenging times, and how to embrace the faster, cheaper, more competitive tenets of digital to exploit these market conditions:

Posted in : Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), IT Outsourcing / IT Services

Watching the rise of the mid-tier services providers – especially in the midst of a pandemic – has been nothing short of impressive.  Firms that got written off a few years ago because “only the top tier only got to the table”… are now at that table.  In fact, I could name several who broke protocol to become sought after partners with reputations for going way above the standard service and regular win engagements against the juggernauts.  Just read our post about the surge in growth for mid-tier IT service providers.

With 50% growth in the last three years, Coforge – formerly known as NIIT Technologies – is no exception here. In the midst of a $600M platform and (in spite of) a global pandemic, they hit the refresh button with a new name that aligned with their identity.  Changing one’s name is a brave move, but when your British clients have called you “Nit” for a couple of decades and you have a supercool CEO who plays field hockey and racketball, you just gotta do it…

Within 3 years, CEO Sudhir Singh has led Coforge has taken this firm well past the $500m barrier, so let’s get the story behind the strategy, the rebrand, and how the Coforge King sees the industry unraveling…

Phil Fersht, CEO and Chief Analyst, HFS Research: Thank you Sudhir for taking the time today to speak with us. You have recently gone through a rebranding and I would like to find out why Coforge and you decided on a name change, particularly in these economically uncertain times. And a little bit about how you have fared since you have taken over the role… 

Sudhir Singh, CEO and Executive Director, Coforge: Very good to be speaking with you Phil. We spoke about the name change around February when we met in Mumbai. This was an exercise that we were very excited about because all of us had this gut feeling that we are not going to be getting too many opportunities in our careers to rename a $600 million platform. This was a nine-month exercise, which was very interesting for us.

We had several compelling names in the mix. It was the connotation of the name and what we wanted to point out that was primarily important. If you play back some of the names, I think it will give you a flavour of how we approached the exercise. We had very interesting names like Sibyl, meaning a female oracle, and I must confess that that name I really liked, which we found very intriguing as it had a very forward-looking view. There were other names I remember discussing with you, like Boldwave and Brightspeed, which had a strong connotation around looking creatively, innovatively, boldly at the future – which again was interesting.

“Coforge, to us, stands for ‘working together to create lasting value’. That partnership element to all of us… that is well reflected through the partnership across employees. The one thing we’ve always prided ourselves on is that we’ve had the lowest employee attrition across the IT services industry, not just for a few years, but for the past decade.”

And then we had Coforge, which was in some ways the third name in the mix. Coforge, to us, stands for ‘working together to create lasting value’. That partnership element to all of us – the leadership team across the organization and the employee set – was extremely important. And the reason why I say this, is well reflected through the partnership across employees. The one thing we’ve always prided ourselves on is that we’ve had the lowest employee attrition across the IT services industry, not just for a few years, but for the past decade. 

“We also thought that partnering, which is what the ‘Co’ element in Coforge connotes, was very important because it stood for extreme client-centricity. This is what we are known for…”

 We also thought that partnering, which is what the “Co” element in Coforge connotes, was very important because it stood for extreme client-centricity. This is what we are known for, given the best-in-class NPS scores that we have recorded over the years. It also talked about the exceptionally deep partnerships that we have structured, over the years, with the likes of Pega and DuckCreek.

“Summing it up, Coforge stands for working together to create lasting value, working together across employees, working together with clients, working together alongside partners, working together with entities that have come in and been acquired by Coforge over the years, and making them successful.” 

Summing it up, Coforge stands for working together to create lasting value, working together across employees, working together with clients, working together alongside partners, working together with entities that have come in and been acquired by Coforge over the years, and making them successful. We have the stellar record of having almost all transactions done successfully over the last ten years where external teams became part of the Coforge family. That, Phil, is the why part of it.

As far as the why now is concerned, which you talked about, we have been on a very accelerated growth path for the last three years. And, we have also been on a very strong change journey; change when it comes to operating culture, change when it comes to strategy, change when it comes to how the internal and the external world has perceived us. We thought this was a good time, when we have some downtime, to step back, to reflect collectively, to rename ourselves and make that change that’s already been injected into the organisation more explicit.

“In the last three years, we’ve grown from being a $400 million to a $600 million firm. So we’ve grown about 50%. It has essentially been organic growth, the $200 million that we have added.”

Finally, the third question is on how we have fared. The last three years for us have been fantastic, and not just because of the financial metrics. I believe we spoke for the first time three years back. In the last three years, we’ve grown from being a $400 million to a $600 million firm. So we’ve grown about 50%. It has essentially been organic growth, the $200 million that we have added. We now are at a place where – and I have consciously held off on this for the last three years – we are running a huge internal campaign that we are calling a path to a billion. What we have done over the last three years – in terms of making changes, in terms of making sure they hit the road, in terms of making sure they get translated into impact, in terms of financial metrics as well – has now set us on that path. 

We set off on this journey where we said we will not just focus on being specialist technology providers, but we will select a few industries and make sure that we are very good when it comes to translating the applicability of those technologies in the industry context or the client context. That’s paid out extremely well for us… We think that’s what allowed us to differentiate ourselves…

It’s been a very interesting, a very fun ride for all of us, all 11,000 employees across Coforge, over the last three years.”

We’ve also done some very interesting things in terms of making sure that the strategy that we were talking about wasn’t just something that stayed as a talking point but got translated. Three years back, we set off on this journey where we said we will not just focus on being specialist technology providers, but we will select a few industries and make sure that we are very good when it comes to translating the applicability of those technologies in the industry context or the client context. That’s paid out extremely well for us by our estimates. We think that’s what has powered our growth. We think that’s what allowed us to differentiate ourselves. So, it’s been a very interesting, a very fun ride for all of us, all 11,000 employees across Coforge, over the last three years.

Exhibit 1. Coforge’s revenue growth under Sudhir’s leadership  

Phil Fersht: Fantastic, Sudhir. That’s great to hear. And, you know, we don’t hear too much about where you came from, Sudhir, and how you ended up running this business. You also have a fairly entrepreneurial family as well. I’ve met your brother Sudip once or twice in the past, and he’s a CEO in a similar industry. Can you share a bit more about your background and why there are services in the family blood right?

Sudhir: Sure. Our dad was in the Indian Army, Phil. We grew up bouncing from cantonment to cantonment, every two years in India, just about every remote and not-so-remote part of India. And my brother and I – and I specifically – went through the same markers that were prescribed for most kids in India growing up. I am an engineer and completed an MBA from IIM Calcutta in 1995.  I joined Hindustan Lever, which was a job that had just about nothing practically to do with technology, and that’s where I spent the first six and a half years of my life. Levers, which is what Hindustan Lever in India was called then, was, and I suspect still is in many ways, the executive training factory for corporate India. Not just technology services, but if you look at the broader Indian corporate space, the firm that’s possibly contributed the most number of CEOs in the Indian corporate space has been Levers.  I found those six and a half years spent in Levers truly formative in just about every sense of that word. 

To give you a quick flavor, I was in sales and marketing, and we used to have this very interesting four-month stint when you joined the firm as a salesperson. You were given about 70 Indian rupees, which was the equivalent of 2 dollars a day, and you had to live in a hotel. In my case, I was sent to this very interesting sliver between Bhutan and Bangladesh for four months, called Cooch Behar, live on it, and sell every day in the markets. As a Sales Manager, I suspect I have personally been to every population greater than 500 people across Western India.

“As I reflect back on them, those first six and a half years [at Hindustan Lever] were extremely instructive. …When it actually comes to understanding the importance of execution and making sure that when one commits to a goal or a strategy, one delivers as a team on that strategy irrespective of change, irrespective of constraints. I think that culture is something I picked up from there.”

As I reflect back on them, those first six and a half years were extremely instructive. There are a lot of things that we all learned about that we talk about over the years. But when it actually comes to understanding the importance of execution and making sure that when one commits to a goal or a strategy, one delivers as a team on that strategy irrespective of change, irrespective of constraints. I think that culture is something I picked up from there.

The second thing that I picked up, and I suspect that stayed with me, has been the emphasis around what today we call client-centricity. In the 90s, in that industry, in that context, it was called knowing the customers of your customer. So, my customers were retailers; their customers were the people who actually bought the stuff that we placed in those shops. Those two things stayed with me.

From there, I had a fantastic nine-year stint with Infosys. I went from managing brands and selling products in rural India straight to the States with Infosys in 2001. I was initially managing one of the marquee financial services clients that they had and subsequently, the payments and the cards service line within BFS. That, in turn, was followed by a six-and-a-half-year stint with Genpact where I was the Chief Operating Officer of their capital markets business. For the last three and a half years, I’ve now been with Coforge, which is the erstwhile NIIT Technologies. So that’s a quick snapshot.

And you’re absolutely right, Phil. Sudip, who is my brother, is the Chief Exec at ITC Infotech. He has also talked to me very fondly about the interactions he’s had with you.

Phil: Oh, good. [Laughs]. There are lots of colorful personalities in our industry, and I think it’s actually been a bonding time, the number of conversations we’ve been having with folks about not just how we’re going to get through this as firms, but also as an industry. I think we have to look at each other a bit, and sure, we compete, but also we have to figure out how we can all take some advice on how to survive together. Providers always want to sell services the way they’re structured, the way their P&Ls are set out, the way they like to go to market. But ultimately, it’s very hard to influence how clients want to buy. Are you seeing a distinct change in this emerging market? Are clients looking to pay for things differently? Are they looking at having greater visibility into the people you have or the technologies you have? Are you seeing things distinctly shifting?

“On the IT side, the interesting change that I have seen over the last six months is what I like to call the ‘try-before-you-buy’ phase. It’s almost the equivalent of a phase zero.”

Sudhir: We are seeing some interesting shifts, Phil, and a few long-term trends getting underlined a little more. I’m sure you relate to that, you hear about that as well, Phil. On the IT side, the interesting change that I have seen over the last six months is what I like to call the ‘try-before-you-buy’ phase. It’s almost the equivalent of a phase zero, where you go in with a certain solution or a POC, or a working prototype, or a piece of IP.

There is an increased preference for getting that working prototype within the client premises – to have it work for a short burst with live client data – to assess whether it is going to work, whether it is relevant, and whether it is going to add value, instead of just being another thing that gets added to the ecosystem. So, I think that has been the most fascinating shift, especially, on the IP side of our portfolio, a ‘try-before-you-buy.’ A phase zero before a phase one isn’t something that we encountered too much before the pandemic came in.

“The other thing that we are seeing, which I think has been very interesting, is that the high-end consulting services, especially architecture services, …is the piece where the willingness to engage with architecture SWAT teams has gone up significantly.”

Another change that we are seeing is ‘the dedicated resource model’, which still occupied a significant amount of the revenue pie across the organization, is getting replaced, especially on the classical development side where more of a capacity-based pricing construct is coming in. Maintenance has seen a stronger pay per ticket kind of model. And the other thing that we are seeing, which I think has been very interesting, is that the high-end consulting services, especially architecture services – that I have always had a very pronounced bias of having people in the here-and-now and co-located – is the piece where the willingness to engage with architecture SWAT teams has gone up significantly. 

I think digital transformation continues to be an ask, not just in travel, insurance, BFS, healthcare spaces, but people are looking for an IT service provider who can be reliable when it comes to the classical delivery and can keep the lights on, manage operations and yet also have the ability to drive transformation at the same time. Now, this isn’t new, it’s always been an ask. But the fact that the delivery has to be robust, and to some extent resilient, has just got a little bit more underscored during the pandemic.

Phil: And do you see a period of consolidation happening in services? I have mixed views on this, in that I think we’re seeing some successful investments in niche companies who can add pockets of value, but not necessarily in these full-scale mergers that we’ve seen in the past. I think with Virtusa, for example, we saw a hefty investment being made by Baring and some other things happening in some of the mid-sized businesses. Do you think that we’re going to see a wave of consolidation, or do you think this is more around investors seeing this as a fairly safe place to park their investment in the next two or three years? Is it more the latter, do you think, or are we still waiting to see how this one unravels?

Sudhir: I think the jury is out on that, Phil, and I suspect the jury has been out on that for the last five to ten years. Investors have made very, very good returns on mid-tier players like us.  I think we are a prime example, just looking at our valuation as an organization. There is a case to be made for both, and you know this as well as I do. On the mid-tier side, my submission always has been that the growth that can be driven as a function of white-glove service customization, so that we can provide customized attention, should command a premium. The speed with which we can change the culture – we can talk digital but change the culture of operating teams – is an asset.

“Investors have made returns – significant returns – on mid-tier players like us. The growth – coming from white-glove service, the ability to transform at speed, cultural aspects that need to be transformed, and now the ability to draw top-drawer talent in line with what tier 1 firms in the past have done – creates very solid case for mid-tier players.”

And finally, I think the big shift that’s happened over the past few years is the ability of mid-tier players like us to attract top-drawer talent, especially given some of the ownership changes that have happened in the background, again has changed.  So, I would say, reflecting back, investors have made returns – significant returns – on mid-tier players like us. The growth – coming from white-glove service, the ability to transform at speed, cultural aspects that need to be transformed, and now the ability to draw top-drawer talent in line with what tier 1 firms in the past have done – creates very solid case for mid-tier players, as well.

Phil: Sudhir, as we look beyond pandemics and things that I think we want to get past, what would you like to say is your one wish you’d like to see in this industry when we get beyond 2020, and we get more of a longer-term view of where we’re going? What’s your one wish for things we can change for the better, that can make us keep the best and the brightest in our business, and make these more attractive and fulfilling careers?

Sudhir: The most important thing for us as the folks operating in industry, that we possibly want to dwell on, is how to make this industry and a career within this industry more aspirational, Phil. Because the talent catchment that we are operating in, increasingly these days, is a talent catchment where the product players also operate. 

“It is not just tech specialization that IT service players like us bring to the table, it is also the industry appreciation. And there can be, for lack of a better word, no stronger consultant to a client than an engineer who understands both the technology and also appreciates the context in which it is being applied.”

It is imperative that, as a bunch of leaders in the industry, we work to more explicitly call out how IT service employees who are creating a career in IT services can actually drive transformation at scale and faster, almost equal to if not more, and drive more impact than product players alone might be able to, because we are already embedded in the businesses, in the organization that we’ve been servicing, for a long time. So the number one ask, at least in my head, is we need to figure out a way to make careers in our industry more aspirational, to explicitly call out the ability to transform businesses that is very unique to us, because we are so strongly embedded in some of these organizations.

The second thing that I think we should start calling out is the fact that it is not just tech specialization that IT service players like us bring to the table, it is also the industry appreciation. And there can be, for lack of a better word, no stronger consultant to a client than an engineer who understands both the technology and also appreciates the context in which it is being applied. So, we need to call that out more explicitly, we need to position that more clearly. Those two things, I think, are the ones that we need to focus on.

I think it’s also a great opportunity.

“IT services, compared to BPO services, have always lagged behind when it comes to equality across genders, for example, in terms of the employee mix. The fact that we can now openly offer more flexibility, the fact that we can now openly offer work-from-home as a semi-permanent or permanent option should also help us address some of those diversity issues that we’ve faced in the past.”

We’ve all been able to step back; we’ve all been able to work effectively and make sure that the work-from-home model, the flexible model that’s come in, allows us to start approaching a broader catchment. IT services, compared to BPO services, have always lagged behind when it comes to equality across genders, for example, in terms of the employee mix. The fact that we can now openly offer more flexibility, the fact that we can now openly offer work-from-home as a semi-permanent or permanent option should also help us address some of those diversity issues that we’ve faced in the past. Those are the three things that I would point out.

Phil: I think that’s fantastic, Sudhir. And just one final question. Why did you ultimately decide on the name Coforge? Was there anything in there that really struck you, that beat out these other suggestions?  

Sudhir: Well, you’re right, I think a lot of it has to finally do with a gut instinct there, Phil. Coforge was a name where we were trying to call out the partnership piece that I talked about; however, we were slightly conflicted around the potential connotations of the “forge” part of it in a technology services organization. “Forge” can have a somewhat old-world-ish connotation. But we liked the “forge” piece because, all said and done, while we do want to drive transformation that is digitally-led, we would like the results of those transformations to create a lasting impact. Hence that was the reason why Coforge won over some of the other names that I remember sharing with you, like Sibyl and Boldwave which, again, were extremely attractive from our point of view.

Phil: Yeah. Boldwave was good as well, I liked that one, and Sibyl reminds me of Basil’s wife in Fawlty Towers, which may have been memorable. Coforge does make me think about people forging things together, which makes me think about partnerships. I think it’s a good name. And I’m very pleased to see you guys have found a good path in this tough market to keep your growth story going and keep thinking about the future. It’s been great watching it and getting to know you guys better. I thank you for your time today and very much look forward to getting together with you in person, at lunch or dinner sometime, when we can finally look back on 2020. [Laughs].

Sudhir: I’m looking forward to that, as well, Phil. Very good to see you, and I do look forward to meeting you in person. Thank you so much for your time.

Phil: Awesome. Thanks, everybody 😉 

Sundhir Singh and Jaspreet Singh of Coforge joined by Phil Fersht and Sia Rastami of HFS

Posted in : IT Outsourcing / IT Services, Outsourcing Heros

Posted in : Cloud Computing, OneOffice

Posted in : Uncategorized

There aren’t many more exciting professions to be in these days than the analyst industry… you’re right at the heart of all the key industry stakeholders absorbing a level of disruption, volatility and confusion we’ll likely never experience again (we hope).  When everyone is stuck at home fretting about their futures, what better to do than talk to analysts plying their trade unraveling the current scenarios?

As an analyst firm, we need analysts who thrive in this scenario, with the experience and foresight to help us define our Vision2025, who understand this technology convergence of the hybrid cloud and containerization with data and digital technologies, all made possible by automation, AI, digital workers and – most importantly – people.  So when my old friend, colleague, and fellow Tottenham sufferer Dr Thomas Reuner agreed to return to the HFS family after a two-year sojourn in the AI software world, we knew we had the right person to lead our tech services vision…

Tom – so why did you choose to come back to the analyst community?  What really makes you get up in the morning?

Funny that you ask that, Phil. I am definitely not a morning person. If anything, I am intolerable in the morning, just ask my long-suffering lovely wife. On a more serious note, what drives me (professionally) is to understand technology evolution and how it helps organizations to advance their delivery of services. I get a real kick when I see in meetings and projects that I can help clients to better understand the dynamics of the market and achieve their strategic objectives. Working with the brilliant folks at arago has helped me to gain a more nuanced understanding of all the issues around AI, but also to appreciate more the many challenges and opportunities that innovative startups face. As such, I hope I have gleaned a much more rounded view of the industry. But deep down I always had an inkling that I would return to the analyst fold at some point. When you guys came knocking at my door that point came perhaps earlier than I expected, but being an analyst has always been my passion, so I didn’t have to think too long to make up my mind.

It must have been quite the experience working for an AI software provider during the hype-overload phase and then to experience the sobering reality of COVID where the rules of the game went out of the window.  Can you share what you learned from it all?

arago is a unique organization, both in terms of a highly differentiated technology but equally culturally. Working with one of the best development teams in AI has given me a much better comprehension of where the development of AI is really at. Not surprisingly, there is a fascinating life beyond just Machine Learning and Chatbots. However, on the negative flipside, being at the cusp of innovation that can’t be squeezed into pigeonholes provides significant challenges in engaging with the broader market. All too often we were asked “how are you different from RPA?”, “how are you different from Machine Learning?” And even where we made progress in discussions, we often got “show us the magic” as if the automation platform was a smartphone that can transform processes in a similar way to manipulating pictures.

The sobering reality of COVID was intriguing in many respects. On the one hand, the notion of a Digital Workforce took on a completely new quality as companies never really envisaged that employees literally couldn’t get to work. Thus, arago’s end-to-end automation became a have-to-have as you tend to call it. On the other hand, arago was at the forefront of providing a technology solution to trace COVID that would be interoperable between many countries. It was a rollercoaster ride starting with a groundswell of positivity as everybody wanted to engage with us but culminating in informal pressures and fickle politicians derailing much of the brilliant work my colleagues had done. I suppose much had to do with the various COVID apps being seen as a key to getting access to healthcare systems and consequently contracts. What saddened me about this journey is that the arago team worked pro bono on all of this and our CEO Chris Boos worked tirelessly day and night trying to get the project off the ground while engaging with the public about the implications and merits of the approach. To witness the headwinds and some of the public discussions on all of this makes one only more cynical. If anything, the experience has reinforced for me the importance of not losing sight of informal dynamics when analyzing the industry.

So where next for intelligent automation?  Will we see the phoenix rising from the ashes?  We talk a lot about the “have-to-have” economy at HFS… how much of this is really a have-to-have? 

I have fond memories of the early days of Intelligent Automation. It was a small community and we all had no clear idea of where the development would be heading. At least for me, the context was always about how do we progress to end-to-end automation and how can we decouple routine services delivery from labor arbitrage. To help clients on their digital journey, collapsing the many siloes was top of the agenda. Yet, the current hype around RPA appears to be confining the goals more and more to task automation and employee productivity. And in my view, the discussions on “Hyperautomation” are not helping either because they are re-enforcing an RPA-centric view of the world.

Therefore, we should re-focus the discussions back to the outcomes we had in mind at the outset, take a more holistic view and focus on how we finally can scale deployments. If we succeed with that you could argue we would see a phoenix rising from the ashes, but I am not holding my breath. The breath-taking valuations for some of the RPA providers are masking many of those discussions. At the same time, the blurriness as to what constitutes AI is adding to the confusion.

As with the discussion on COVID, Intelligent Automation and a Digital Workforce should be have-to-haves to guarantee business continuity in these pandemic times where organizations have to plan for the unknown. But talking to clients they increasingly realize the limitations of RPA and that we need new approaches to really succeed with a Digital Workforce. It is here where I see HFS continuing to be the leading authority of guiding the market.

And how much will enterprises depend on services to make their have-to-haves happen for them?  As you scope your research agenda across the tech services domain what areas are you going to cover that will help HFS clients and readers?

You always give me the easy tasks (laughs). Services remain, or more precisely, build the cornerstone in most organizations as they are accelerating the journey towards the OneOffice (or call it truly digital organizations) and are trying to find ways to survive these pandemics times. But crucially, success is about the outcome, not the technology itself. As such, the research agenda will be aligned with the various HFS frameworks, the OneOffice being the most relevant one. With that in mind, it is about how best to orchestrate and configure cloud offerings as the market is shifting from multi-cloud to hybrid-cloud. Crucially, this includes change agents such as RPA and AI as legacy environments have to work together with all those innovations. As we are touching on the change agents, of course, Intelligent Automation and AI will remain close to my heart, but I hope I will bring new insights to the discussions having benefitted from working with the brilliant folks at arago. In the context of applications, we are likely to expand our coverage on distributed agile. What are the best practices to make it work in complex engagements, including outsourced engagements? Similarly, looking at our coverage on testing, I could imagine focussing more on the testing of innovation, especially around the big change agents. I hope you can see, Phil, that this is more about aligning our research to our sweet spots rather than reinventing the wheel. But as I have the privilege of working with a hugely talented team, I am sure we will be able to move the goalposts at least a bit.

Now you’re officially an analyst veteran (hehe), what do you see next for the analyst industry?  Are we still going to get the same old vendor grids and turgid vendor-driven messaging, or will we finally see a change in how the industry consumes research and engages with analysts? 

Thanks for reminding me that time is flying, Phil. If I am honest, I am seeing at best a marginal change in how the industry deals with the wondrous world of analysts. Too many AR folks spend the majority of their time dealing with Magic Quadrants, notwithstanding any other grids or activities. We have seen more consolidation of analyst firms, yet we haven’t really seen new firms with new ideas breaking through. There are many wonderful analysts out there, but if you look at the industry, I would argue it has gone a tad stale. Smart AR folks reacting to that by working more with individual analysts. Take some stalwarts like Gurvinder Sahni at Wipro, he is building deep relationships but then orchestrates those relationships according to his requirements. And if I take my experience on the vendor side, which represented more innovative startups, I was struggling to get relevant advice. The guidance was often templated and you were encouraged to engage with ten other analysts to glean relevant insights. My “favorite” piece of advice, was: “Tom, you have to reinvent RPA for your space”. But I would love to see new firms emerging as this is the most challenging but also the most intriguing time to be an analyst.

And finally, Tom, what will you do to set your own research apart as we venture into this murky future ahead?

To be honest, the quality of my research will always be in the eye of the beholder. But I would hope by leveraging HFS’s vast network of buy-side organizations and by continuing to build deep relationships with stakeholders, I can provide value to my clients. It was always the collaboration with some of those outstanding industry veterans that has helped to shape frameworks like the Intelligent Automation Continuum. Folks like Boris Krumrey at UiPath and Wayne McQuoid at Credit Suisse are top of the tree. By exchanging ideas, challenges, and working together on projects, the most relevant research pieces have come up. You keep challenging me to revamp the Continuum and revamp our IT Services research. To do that I really look forward to engaging with many of the brilliant folks in our network!!

Well it’s terrific to have you back in the HFS family Tom and looking forward to hearing your new ideas

Posted in : Artificial Intelligence, IT Outsourcing / IT Services, it-infrastructure, OneOffice