MNC R&D centers in India are engaged in complex projects
By siliconindia   |   Wednesday, 26 May 2010, 22:35 IST   |    9 Comments
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MNC R&D centers in India are engaged in complex projects
Bangalore: The R&D centres of MNCs in India have to deal with 'high' complexity of products as opposed to the perception, found a study by Zinnov Management Consulting. In this regard, Zinnov Management Consulting has developed a unique 'Maturity Model Framework' to help organizations assess maturity of their global R&D centers to deliver high value. It said that 'cost' and 'talent', the historic drivers of R&D, are now giving way to innovation and access to new markets, forcing more companies to move up the maturity level. This unique framework will help the R&D centers in India to build a stronger business case with their US headquarters. This model will help companies understand where they are positioned in the maturity curve relative to their peers and can be used to benchmark organizations across R&D verticals. Less than 10 percent products being executed at the India center are in the 'Product Leadership' stage and 50 percent of them are still in the 'Engineering Support' stage, revealed the benchmarking exercise. Most of the products in lower stages of maturity are high complexity products. Around 60 percent of products analyzed were either supporting or leading the product management function. A positive correlation was found between the maturity stages and age of the products in India. Products less than three years old in India were generally found to be in lower stages of maturity while most of the products in higher stages of maturity were more than seven years old in India. "Lack of technical and managerial talent is the key hurdle for Indian centers as they try to move up the maturity curve. However, the Maturity Model Benchmarking framework is an objective assessment tool that can be effectively used by these centers to build a business case for global stakeholders", said Pari Natarajan, CEO, Zinnov Management Consulting. The framework categorizes the various stages of maturity of an R&D centre and has listed them as follows: Level 1: Engineering Support: Team supports another global team by contributing in coding, testing and QA part of the PDLC. Team lacks key design skills and product knowledge and hence is dependent on other centers for product and domain expertise. Level 2: Module Leadership: Team develops complete module(s) (including design) for a product with minimal or no support from another global center team. Team has key design skills and fair product knowledge to manage the module autonomously. Level 3: Engineering Leadership: Team is in charge of engineering design and development of the complete product. The team has strong domain expertise and complete product knowledge to execute product design, module design and integration. The team may be supported by other teams on coding, testing and QA activities. Level 4: Product Leadership: Along with Engineering Leadership, the team is also responsible for business aspects such as Product Management, Customer interaction, Channel Partnerships, etc. The team devises the product roadmap and works closely with the engineering teams to get the product to market on time. "Last but not the least, this framework will not only help these MNC R&D centers in India identify gaps in maturity and capability in the current mode of operations, but also understand and gauge their maturity relative to their competitors," added Natarajan.

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