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IT Industry Towards Transformation Partnerships
Ganesh Natarajan
VC & CEO-Zensar Technologies
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Zensar Technologies is a software services provider with industry expertise that spans retail, manufacturing, banking, insurance, utilities, healthcare and life sciences. Zensar has more than 7,000 employees with sales and operations, presence across U.S., UK, Germany, Sweden, Middle East, South Africa, Singapore, Australia, China and Japan. The company delivers comprehensive services in mission- critical applications, enterprise applications, e-business, BPO and Knowledge Services.

A hundred billion dollar industry that has grown from humble beginnings in the early nineties to global dominance – the IT and Business Services outsourcing industry in India has truly put India on the world map and given all global Indians a reason to hold their head high! It’s not just the justifiable pride we feel when we see over three million directly and another seven million indirectly employed in the sector and our industry’s contribution to Indian GDP and incremental exports growing with every passing year. The more important contribution is the creation of jobs in every country and economy we have touched, the addition to shareholder value that has happened because of our involvement and the satisfaction that global customers have evinced in working with Indian partners and deriving efficiency and effectiveness benefits in their entire value chain.

The surest sign of an industry which has matured is the ability to speak to customers about their business problems and potential technology or process solutions rather than organize a parade of technology capabilities. Today most of the top twenty or thirty firms from India have this capability in abundance and the case studies of success to prove it. The earlier capability which got the offshore industry to develop, that of application development and remote support and migration of applications as well as infrastructure management is fully mature today. In addition, the prowess in helping global corporations implement foundation enterprise resource planning solutions has morphed to edge applications in supply chain and demand chain management and is now moving downwards to product design industrial automation and manufacturing execution systems as well as upwards to enterprise mobility and social media solutions that enable all companies to develop end to end touch points from the shop floor through the extended enterprise to the end customer.

The ability to be a true transformation partner to global enterprises is not without challenges. Indian firms have been celebrated for their technology capabilities but it has always been the global consulting and accounting firms which have found favor for enterprise transformation programs. The willingness and the ability to scale and offer a consulting led approach to any engagement, built on demonstrated competencies in understanding the customer’s business domain is key to success. One can expect to see a lot of heavy hitters in overseas markets hired by the Indian industry, who will not only give the much needed credibility in the consulting and business domain, but also bring the width of experience to configure end to end total outsourcing solutions which can be sold and executed flawlessly for customers in all markets.




These are tough times to talk about transformation with most global economies in recession and companies tightening their budgets across the board. However it is this very limitation that can be translated to opportunity. The industry has been through trials by fire in the past and there is no doubt that we will again emerge triumphant!
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