AIMS 2004, the first of a series of annual IT Management seminars, was the talk of town atop one particular hill of Kozhikode city. IIM Kozhikode hosted the stalwarts of the Indian IT industry as they shared their ideas and thoughts on the theme Marketing of IT Solutions. Spread over the 28th and 29th of August, the seminar was attended by some of the big names of the Indian IT industry and with the pertinent nature of the theme, it was all the more beneficial for both the concerned parties. For the students of IIMK, it was an opportunity to know how the thought leaders of the Indian IT industry are planning to counter the imminent threats of offshoring backlash in the US and the ever growing challenge from other cheap man-power countries like China. For the IT corporates, they had the chance to interact with what is widely perceived as the cream of Indian intelligentsia. An opportunity to not only clarify their stand in front of an audience of one of the IIMs, but to also make their own sales pitch in front of the business leaders of tomorrow was something no company would have missed.
Credit goes to Abhinav and Anirudh of the second year at IIMK, who form the core of Abakus, the systems interest group at IIMK, for not only conceptualising this event but also bringing it to fruition and what a fruition at that. The student council of both years, the entire Placement Committee, and not to mention the numerous volunteers who managed all the logistics did a wonderful job and it is their efforts that are going to go a long way towards building the IIMK brand and helping it compete not only nationally but also on a world level.
Day 1, AIMS '04, IIM Kozhikode
The seminar kicked off with the inauguration of the event as the distinguished speakers and Dr. Krishna Kumar, the director of IIMK, lighted the lamps. After the traditional inauguration and a bouquet welcome to all the guests, Dr. Krishna Kumar gave the welcome speech. Dr. Kumar mentioned the mission and vision of IIMK as being identified as a national institution of international reckoning and adopting a number of measures to accomplish the same. He talked about upcoming events in the institute that will further strengthen the industry interaction with the institute. He also talked about the various executive management programs undertaken by the institute. Mr. Kumar appealed to the guests gathered to help the institute achieve its objectives, specifically by helping to develop its intellectual capital.
The stage was then set for the seminar with Mr. Arun Seth delivering the key note address and narrowing down the context of the discussion with some exquisite examples and some very pertinent data to support his presentation.
Mr. Arun Seth, Chairman, BT India and Chairman, ITeS-BPO, NASSCOM
The thrust of Mr. Seth's speech appeared to be the inherent advantage that India possesses in terms of intellectual capital. Enlightening the audience about the fast ageing China and a relatively young India, he said that we have a big competitive edge because of that. Also, due to our youth, we come across as ones who do not have any legacy to hold us back. Mr. Seth pointed out the role that NASSCOM has been playing in the growth of the Indian IT sector by lobbying with the Government to get tax and other benefits. NASSCOM were the first to coin the term IT Enabled Services for the BPO sector, so that they come under the IT umbrella and get all the related concessions. It was because of the NASSCOM's intiative in pushing up the de-monopolisation of VSNL, that the telecom industry has seen such phenomenol growth.
Credit goes to Abhinav and Anirudh of the second year at IIMK, who form the core of Abakus, the systems interest group at IIMK, for not only conceptualising this event but also bringing it to fruition and what a fruition at that. The student council of both years, the entire Placement Committee, and not to mention the numerous volunteers who managed all the logistics did a wonderful job and it is their efforts that are going to go a long way towards building the IIMK brand and helping it compete not only nationally but also on a world level.
Day 1, AIMS '04, IIM Kozhikode
The seminar kicked off with the inauguration of the event as the distinguished speakers and Dr. Krishna Kumar, the director of IIMK, lighted the lamps. After the traditional inauguration and a bouquet welcome to all the guests, Dr. Krishna Kumar gave the welcome speech. Dr. Kumar mentioned the mission and vision of IIMK as being identified as a national institution of international reckoning and adopting a number of measures to accomplish the same. He talked about upcoming events in the institute that will further strengthen the industry interaction with the institute. He also talked about the various executive management programs undertaken by the institute. Mr. Kumar appealed to the guests gathered to help the institute achieve its objectives, specifically by helping to develop its intellectual capital.
The stage was then set for the seminar with Mr. Arun Seth delivering the key note address and narrowing down the context of the discussion with some exquisite examples and some very pertinent data to support his presentation.
Mr. Arun Seth, Chairman, BT India and Chairman, ITeS-BPO, NASSCOM
The thrust of Mr. Seth's speech appeared to be the inherent advantage that India possesses in terms of intellectual capital. Enlightening the audience about the fast ageing China and a relatively young India, he said that we have a big competitive edge because of that. Also, due to our youth, we come across as ones who do not have any legacy to hold us back. Mr. Seth pointed out the role that NASSCOM has been playing in the growth of the Indian IT sector by lobbying with the Government to get tax and other benefits. NASSCOM were the first to coin the term IT Enabled Services for the BPO sector, so that they come under the IT umbrella and get all the related concessions. It was because of the NASSCOM's intiative in pushing up the de-monopolisation of VSNL, that the telecom industry has seen such phenomenol growth.
According to Mr. Seth, there was the need for the IT industry to align with institutes like IIM Kozhikode to train its middle management with the best business practices.
With 50% of the CMM enabled companies in the world being Indian companies, Mr. Seth said that India has gained an advantage that can be converted to a $50 bn industry with the generation of 2 mn direct and 2 mn downstream jobs in years to come. This can be made possible only if the current marketers of Indian IT sector focus on and exhibit the unique advantage that Indian IT possesses of having a disruptive model where IT and BPO are delivered together.
The need of the day, Mr. Seth said, is to move the marketing operations from the back office to the front office and change the solution based approach to a more partnership based game plan. He proposed that the much hyped about offshoring backlash is actually less a threat to Indian IT companies than that caused by reservations about data security issues in the clients' mind.
Mr. Sam Iyengar, Senior Advisor, ITSMA
In an impressive presentation, the senior advisor from ITSMA put forward the changing face of marketing in the Indian IT sector. He said that presently, a huge chunk of marketing goes into marketing communication. A more proactive role can, however, be played if the level of discipline existing in the delivery model of the IT companies is also brought to their marketing model. Mr. Iyengar said that the focus should shift from being process oriented to being innovative...from being internally oriented to market oriented...from being just technical to being consultative. He said that there is the need for a proactive solutions portfolio and a move from verticalisation to identifying specific market segments and moving forward to capture them. He said that this shift from the tactical to strategic marketing will clinch the deal for India IT Inc.
Mr. Iyengar mentioned that it is important for the global players from the Indian IT sector to be global and at the same time, behave local so that they can be close to the customer fabric. According to Mr. Iyengar, Public Relations needs to be replaced with the execution of a brand strategy to increase the visibility of India IT Inc. More value based pricing is required to hold and re-gain the market that was initially won over by the low cost proposition alone.
Mr. MV Sarma, AVP, GIS, Computer Sciences Corporation India Ltd
Mr. Sarma from CSC dealt with the service marketing part of the Indian IT companies. Customer loyalty through service management, he said, is the key today. With the stringent down times that are imposed in the world market (only about 23 minutes in an entire year), Mr. Sarma said that the IT companies need to be process oriented with customer satisfaction as their main focus. He said that being proactive today means not just going to visit or calling up the clients, but to use tools and technology to predict failures and prevent them. He said that the infrastructure needs to be improved to achieve sustainable cost reduction and despite the inherent quality advantage of India, if the Indian IT companies do not realise that the challenges vary across different verticals, it will be difficult for them to grow.
As per Mr. Sarma, there exist certain gaps in the companies due to under developed middle management that needs to be filled up by using tools like decison making matrix so that the right time is chosen for various tasks like enhancing capacity and so on. Apart from the process related productivity that everyone talks about, Mr. Sarma said that it is essential to focus on infrastructure based productivity by integrating the various processes and moving from an ad hoc organisation to one that enhances customer satisfaction.
Mr. Sarma suggested the four pronged aproach of maximizing, measuring, maintaining, and marketing customer relations in order to get the message of Indian IT companies' coming of age across to the CEOs, the CFOs, and the CIOs of the world. Mr. Sarma also talked about the unique world sourcing strategy adopted by CSC to properly co-ordinate its business functions by optimizing on time zones and resources across the world.
Mr. Deepak Khosla, GM (Central Marketing), Patni
If the previous speakers had talked about the need to introduce changes in the Indian IT companies' marketing game plan, Mr. Khosla explained how to go about it. He divided the Indian IT industry into four different phases. Phase 1, he said, was between 1985 to 1995 and included start ups in application development and maintenance. The primary driving factor in this phase was low cost. The second phase extended from 1995 to 2000 and was the age of e-Business, ERP and most importantly, Y2K. IT, and Indian IT companies, in particular, became fashionable and the new mantra was quality at a lower cost. Mr. Khosla said that the third phase from 2001 to 2004 has seen cutting edge work which is still delivered out of the offshore-onsite model. Security, productivity, and project management have been the key words in this phase. Coming up, he said, is the fourth phase from 2004 to 2007 which will experience a major shakeout in the market that will turn from being based on an offshoring to an outsourcing model.
Contrary to popular belief, Mr. Khosla pointed out that the backlash against offshoring in the US has actually helped both Indian and US companies. For the Indian companies, the backlash has focussed the attention of the US client towards the new possibilities in India that they may have been unaware of earlier. At the same time, for the US companies, they are now outsourcing the kind of work that is different from their basic fiber, and thus the kind of work that they were not supposed to be doing in the first place at all. This, Mr. Khosla said, would only make the US companies more productive and increase their profitability.
Mr. Khosla also mentioned that the main reason for Indians preferring the MNCs coming into India over the core Indian IT companies is the fact that more than anyting else, they possess a much stronger brand. The focus of India IT Inc, therefore, should be more on converting more suspects sitting outside the sales funnel into real prospects. When these prospects go down the sales funnel, they pass through areas where their interest is first narrowed down and then refined so that they end up coming out of the funnel as long term customers of the company.
Mr. Khosla also stressed on the importance of internal marketing within the organization to reinforce its core value proposition. He said that depending on the catch, different people have to be involved in making the sales positioning of the company and thus, marketing , despite being the external face of the company, should be aligned all over the length and breadth of the company. With more of B2B instead of B2C businesses in the Indian IT sector, Mr. Khosla said that online medium's importance as a channel of communication is underlined.
Mr. Khosla pointed out that there are different tools available for different marketing strategies and their optimum use can help the Indian IT companies to move ahead from labor arbitrage and skilled labor propositions to a more innovative and value driven strategy.
Mr. Subhash Dhar, Head, Communication Services Business, Infosys Technologies Ltd
Mr. Dhar started off the post lunch session with the words that he believes that there should be no marketing department in a company since marketing and business are synonymous. He emphasized the fact that instead of being apologetic for what we have, we should realize that we have built some great value for the Indian IT sector and the need of the day is to capitalize on that and increase our under utilized share of the pie. Mr. Dhar said that the English speaking capability of Indians along with the low cost are understood value propositions and have thus been commoditised. It is more important in the current scenario to put due emphasis on the other value propositions that Indian IT companies are providing and yet not highlighting. Marketing's role, in Mr. Dhar's opinion was to rally around these values such as an asynchronous enecution model, better quality, lower total cost of ownership and so on, such that the market can be fully exploited.
Mr. Dhar wanted the Indian IT companies to focus more on their core competencies and follow the more evolved hub and spoke model instead of the peer to peer model of knowledge management. He said that it is important to grease the cycle of innovation and become a part of the value chain of the customers.
Ms. Sangita Singh, CMO and Vice President, Wipro Technologies
One of the youngest VPs of any IT company in India, Ms. Singh has received several awards for her role in shaping the marketing policies of Wipro Technologies. Her presentation for the day highlighted the work that the marketing team at Wipro did to achieve this objective and as such, set the benchmark against which other companies can calibrate themselves.
Ms. Singh noted that it is important that the absolute defnition of marketing be circulated amongst the internal customers of an organisation to enable it to send out measurable business benefits. This can be done through an integrated framework evolved over time to target multiple audiences. Moving from a focus on Go to Market strategy for each business group, Marketing has to generate demand through information and make more focussed and informed sales pitches to get relevant and big business. Ms. Singh said that in deciding partners, the major factors that a customer considers are the peer group and the company's web site. Adopting measures like search engine optimisation, information gathering and management regarding calls to and from Clients to Wipro through the ILG tool, white papers, web events, etc will help an organisation to maintain a balance between the push and pull models and sustain this balance.
Ms. Singh highlighted the importance of brand differentiation vis-a-vis just brand awareness and said that the time had come to identify, have insights, target and measure opportunities for growth. Ms Singh said that to achieve this objective, it is important to continuously innovate in marketing policies and make sure that all the company's employees share the same idea about the company and its marketing program.
Mr. Ramkumar Ramamoorthy, Senior Manager, Corporate Marketing and Communications, Cognizant
Mr. Ramamoorthy called upon the Indian IT companies to leverage their internal assets to build marketing platforms where referral and relationship marketing have a greater role to play as compared to the currently practised transactional marketing. He said that for the IT industry, unlike others, all three out of cost, quality, and volume are high. It is important in this scenario to employ inside-out marketing that focuses on strategy, customer relationship management, employee and analyst marketing, amongst others. Mr. Ramamoorthy said that to do this, it is important to practise proximity marketing and Cognizant, in shifting its executive management to client locations, has done exactly that. It is important to understand the pulse of the market which might vary across different regions and as such, Mr. Ramamoorthy said that Cognizant decided to get seen most where it matters most to be seen.
They aligned themselves across verticals and sub-verticals instead of on the basis of technologies or geographies and this, Mr. Ramamoorthy said, was achieved through what he called dominance marketing, that is getting into a particular sub-vertical or vertical, dominating it, and then expanding further. Mr. Ramamoorthy said that the biggest problems that the customers face and which sometimes even lead to contract terminations, are lack of communication, lack of responsiveness, and clash of cultures. To counter this, it is important to blend in the customers' location with a local sales force and a local executive decision making body empowered to take real time decisions to maintain the competitive edge.
Mr. Ramamoorthy also mentioned the means adopted by Cognizant to develop and sustain their customer relationships through end user customer meets, forming customer advisory councils, and so on. He said that an employee led marketing program is the one that is more likely to be successful. As a security provider, Mr. Ramamoorthy said that it is important to go for quality assessments at an enterprise wide scale.
Mr. Aju Thomas, Tata Consultancy Services
Mr Aju Thomas, from TCS, was the last speaker of the day and he presented a technical paper on how a systems driven approach can benefit the organisational structure from the marketing perspective. He said that in the current scenario, there are some improper consultancy engagements and the minor reason for this may be that the client does not understand its needs properly and is in effect, a bad client. However, Mr. Thomas said that the converse is also true and there are cases where the consultants lose out because of their own inefficiencies. They tend to take up consultancy engagements that do not match their expertise profile, and at times are unable to understand the clients' culture and the expected scope of the engagement.
This lack of clarity, that is required to bridge the gaps between customer expectations and the actual deliverable, Mr. Thomas said, may be countered by a systems driven approach that has the feedback and verification system in-built. This methodology, if employed, would bridge the gaps that may be cognitive, perceptive, communication or implementation based in nature. The focus, Mr. Thomas said, should be on product features that the client is actually going to use. Similarly, he pointed out, the high risk projects like nuclear projects require the formal method rather than the classical method. Therefore, in Mr. Thomas' words, a system based on the multi-modeling approach and having adequate provisions for inter departmental communication, can be the effective model employed for marketing of IT solutions.
The second day of the IT Seminar tomorrow promises to be another exciting venture, all the more so since there are some big names lined up, including the CEOs of some Indian IT companies, who will be participating in a panel discussion. A rock nite is also on the cards and it won't be an exaggeration to say that I am earnestly looking forward to it.
With 50% of the CMM enabled companies in the world being Indian companies, Mr. Seth said that India has gained an advantage that can be converted to a $50 bn industry with the generation of 2 mn direct and 2 mn downstream jobs in years to come. This can be made possible only if the current marketers of Indian IT sector focus on and exhibit the unique advantage that Indian IT possesses of having a disruptive model where IT and BPO are delivered together.
The need of the day, Mr. Seth said, is to move the marketing operations from the back office to the front office and change the solution based approach to a more partnership based game plan. He proposed that the much hyped about offshoring backlash is actually less a threat to Indian IT companies than that caused by reservations about data security issues in the clients' mind.
Mr. Sam Iyengar, Senior Advisor, ITSMA
In an impressive presentation, the senior advisor from ITSMA put forward the changing face of marketing in the Indian IT sector. He said that presently, a huge chunk of marketing goes into marketing communication. A more proactive role can, however, be played if the level of discipline existing in the delivery model of the IT companies is also brought to their marketing model. Mr. Iyengar said that the focus should shift from being process oriented to being innovative...from being internally oriented to market oriented...from being just technical to being consultative. He said that there is the need for a proactive solutions portfolio and a move from verticalisation to identifying specific market segments and moving forward to capture them. He said that this shift from the tactical to strategic marketing will clinch the deal for India IT Inc.
Mr. Iyengar mentioned that it is important for the global players from the Indian IT sector to be global and at the same time, behave local so that they can be close to the customer fabric. According to Mr. Iyengar, Public Relations needs to be replaced with the execution of a brand strategy to increase the visibility of India IT Inc. More value based pricing is required to hold and re-gain the market that was initially won over by the low cost proposition alone.
Mr. MV Sarma, AVP, GIS, Computer Sciences Corporation India Ltd
Mr. Sarma from CSC dealt with the service marketing part of the Indian IT companies. Customer loyalty through service management, he said, is the key today. With the stringent down times that are imposed in the world market (only about 23 minutes in an entire year), Mr. Sarma said that the IT companies need to be process oriented with customer satisfaction as their main focus. He said that being proactive today means not just going to visit or calling up the clients, but to use tools and technology to predict failures and prevent them. He said that the infrastructure needs to be improved to achieve sustainable cost reduction and despite the inherent quality advantage of India, if the Indian IT companies do not realise that the challenges vary across different verticals, it will be difficult for them to grow.
As per Mr. Sarma, there exist certain gaps in the companies due to under developed middle management that needs to be filled up by using tools like decison making matrix so that the right time is chosen for various tasks like enhancing capacity and so on. Apart from the process related productivity that everyone talks about, Mr. Sarma said that it is essential to focus on infrastructure based productivity by integrating the various processes and moving from an ad hoc organisation to one that enhances customer satisfaction.
Mr. Sarma suggested the four pronged aproach of maximizing, measuring, maintaining, and marketing customer relations in order to get the message of Indian IT companies' coming of age across to the CEOs, the CFOs, and the CIOs of the world. Mr. Sarma also talked about the unique world sourcing strategy adopted by CSC to properly co-ordinate its business functions by optimizing on time zones and resources across the world.
Mr. Deepak Khosla, GM (Central Marketing), Patni
If the previous speakers had talked about the need to introduce changes in the Indian IT companies' marketing game plan, Mr. Khosla explained how to go about it. He divided the Indian IT industry into four different phases. Phase 1, he said, was between 1985 to 1995 and included start ups in application development and maintenance. The primary driving factor in this phase was low cost. The second phase extended from 1995 to 2000 and was the age of e-Business, ERP and most importantly, Y2K. IT, and Indian IT companies, in particular, became fashionable and the new mantra was quality at a lower cost. Mr. Khosla said that the third phase from 2001 to 2004 has seen cutting edge work which is still delivered out of the offshore-onsite model. Security, productivity, and project management have been the key words in this phase. Coming up, he said, is the fourth phase from 2004 to 2007 which will experience a major shakeout in the market that will turn from being based on an offshoring to an outsourcing model.
Contrary to popular belief, Mr. Khosla pointed out that the backlash against offshoring in the US has actually helped both Indian and US companies. For the Indian companies, the backlash has focussed the attention of the US client towards the new possibilities in India that they may have been unaware of earlier. At the same time, for the US companies, they are now outsourcing the kind of work that is different from their basic fiber, and thus the kind of work that they were not supposed to be doing in the first place at all. This, Mr. Khosla said, would only make the US companies more productive and increase their profitability.
Mr. Khosla also mentioned that the main reason for Indians preferring the MNCs coming into India over the core Indian IT companies is the fact that more than anyting else, they possess a much stronger brand. The focus of India IT Inc, therefore, should be more on converting more suspects sitting outside the sales funnel into real prospects. When these prospects go down the sales funnel, they pass through areas where their interest is first narrowed down and then refined so that they end up coming out of the funnel as long term customers of the company.
Mr. Khosla also stressed on the importance of internal marketing within the organization to reinforce its core value proposition. He said that depending on the catch, different people have to be involved in making the sales positioning of the company and thus, marketing , despite being the external face of the company, should be aligned all over the length and breadth of the company. With more of B2B instead of B2C businesses in the Indian IT sector, Mr. Khosla said that online medium's importance as a channel of communication is underlined.
Mr. Khosla pointed out that there are different tools available for different marketing strategies and their optimum use can help the Indian IT companies to move ahead from labor arbitrage and skilled labor propositions to a more innovative and value driven strategy.
Mr. Subhash Dhar, Head, Communication Services Business, Infosys Technologies Ltd
Mr. Dhar started off the post lunch session with the words that he believes that there should be no marketing department in a company since marketing and business are synonymous. He emphasized the fact that instead of being apologetic for what we have, we should realize that we have built some great value for the Indian IT sector and the need of the day is to capitalize on that and increase our under utilized share of the pie. Mr. Dhar said that the English speaking capability of Indians along with the low cost are understood value propositions and have thus been commoditised. It is more important in the current scenario to put due emphasis on the other value propositions that Indian IT companies are providing and yet not highlighting. Marketing's role, in Mr. Dhar's opinion was to rally around these values such as an asynchronous enecution model, better quality, lower total cost of ownership and so on, such that the market can be fully exploited.
Mr. Dhar wanted the Indian IT companies to focus more on their core competencies and follow the more evolved hub and spoke model instead of the peer to peer model of knowledge management. He said that it is important to grease the cycle of innovation and become a part of the value chain of the customers.
Ms. Sangita Singh, CMO and Vice President, Wipro Technologies
One of the youngest VPs of any IT company in India, Ms. Singh has received several awards for her role in shaping the marketing policies of Wipro Technologies. Her presentation for the day highlighted the work that the marketing team at Wipro did to achieve this objective and as such, set the benchmark against which other companies can calibrate themselves.
Ms. Singh noted that it is important that the absolute defnition of marketing be circulated amongst the internal customers of an organisation to enable it to send out measurable business benefits. This can be done through an integrated framework evolved over time to target multiple audiences. Moving from a focus on Go to Market strategy for each business group, Marketing has to generate demand through information and make more focussed and informed sales pitches to get relevant and big business. Ms. Singh said that in deciding partners, the major factors that a customer considers are the peer group and the company's web site. Adopting measures like search engine optimisation, information gathering and management regarding calls to and from Clients to Wipro through the ILG tool, white papers, web events, etc will help an organisation to maintain a balance between the push and pull models and sustain this balance.
Ms. Singh highlighted the importance of brand differentiation vis-a-vis just brand awareness and said that the time had come to identify, have insights, target and measure opportunities for growth. Ms Singh said that to achieve this objective, it is important to continuously innovate in marketing policies and make sure that all the company's employees share the same idea about the company and its marketing program.
Mr. Ramkumar Ramamoorthy, Senior Manager, Corporate Marketing and Communications, Cognizant
Mr. Ramamoorthy called upon the Indian IT companies to leverage their internal assets to build marketing platforms where referral and relationship marketing have a greater role to play as compared to the currently practised transactional marketing. He said that for the IT industry, unlike others, all three out of cost, quality, and volume are high. It is important in this scenario to employ inside-out marketing that focuses on strategy, customer relationship management, employee and analyst marketing, amongst others. Mr. Ramamoorthy said that to do this, it is important to practise proximity marketing and Cognizant, in shifting its executive management to client locations, has done exactly that. It is important to understand the pulse of the market which might vary across different regions and as such, Mr. Ramamoorthy said that Cognizant decided to get seen most where it matters most to be seen.
They aligned themselves across verticals and sub-verticals instead of on the basis of technologies or geographies and this, Mr. Ramamoorthy said, was achieved through what he called dominance marketing, that is getting into a particular sub-vertical or vertical, dominating it, and then expanding further. Mr. Ramamoorthy said that the biggest problems that the customers face and which sometimes even lead to contract terminations, are lack of communication, lack of responsiveness, and clash of cultures. To counter this, it is important to blend in the customers' location with a local sales force and a local executive decision making body empowered to take real time decisions to maintain the competitive edge.
Mr. Ramamoorthy also mentioned the means adopted by Cognizant to develop and sustain their customer relationships through end user customer meets, forming customer advisory councils, and so on. He said that an employee led marketing program is the one that is more likely to be successful. As a security provider, Mr. Ramamoorthy said that it is important to go for quality assessments at an enterprise wide scale.
Mr. Aju Thomas, Tata Consultancy Services
Mr Aju Thomas, from TCS, was the last speaker of the day and he presented a technical paper on how a systems driven approach can benefit the organisational structure from the marketing perspective. He said that in the current scenario, there are some improper consultancy engagements and the minor reason for this may be that the client does not understand its needs properly and is in effect, a bad client. However, Mr. Thomas said that the converse is also true and there are cases where the consultants lose out because of their own inefficiencies. They tend to take up consultancy engagements that do not match their expertise profile, and at times are unable to understand the clients' culture and the expected scope of the engagement.
This lack of clarity, that is required to bridge the gaps between customer expectations and the actual deliverable, Mr. Thomas said, may be countered by a systems driven approach that has the feedback and verification system in-built. This methodology, if employed, would bridge the gaps that may be cognitive, perceptive, communication or implementation based in nature. The focus, Mr. Thomas said, should be on product features that the client is actually going to use. Similarly, he pointed out, the high risk projects like nuclear projects require the formal method rather than the classical method. Therefore, in Mr. Thomas' words, a system based on the multi-modeling approach and having adequate provisions for inter departmental communication, can be the effective model employed for marketing of IT solutions.
The second day of the IT Seminar tomorrow promises to be another exciting venture, all the more so since there are some big names lined up, including the CEOs of some Indian IT companies, who will be participating in a panel discussion. A rock nite is also on the cards and it won't be an exaggeration to say that I am earnestly looking forward to it.
2 comments:
Nice to see an honest, unbiased report of the IT seminar which has focussed more on facts rather than rhetoric. I was hoping that once the IT seminar gets over, there would be a flood of emails on organizing the next Finance, Marketing and Consulting seminars from our batch...more people putting their hand up, being counted and making a difference at IIMK. Alas, its become a fad to be critical..we need many more occasions like this if we are ever gonna build a brand out of IIMK like we dream of. I only hope the tide changes soon and people see the bigger picture.
Sure it will, Raul. With the kind of good work that some of you guys are doing, I am sure that others will be motivated enough and that too pretty soon...as for me, I am game any day for any thing :-)
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