Recently when I was talking to a London based entrepreneur who develops static analysis and coding standards compliance tool to organizations that develop code in C and C++, he told me that the current challenge is to convince the Indian senior management to invest in technology and take the quality as a major concern. Yes, even though enterprises are aware of the value that IT brings to the business, they still invest heavily in manpower than in technology.

For instance, when writing software, an engineer can excel at writing, but he can still make mistakes. The key is the enterprise should provide the engineer with tools that can fix the error. Instead, the fact is that today Indian enterprises are adding the bench with more employees to solve the problem. The root cause is senior management should take interest in every level and understand the complexities involved. Recent study commissioned by CA Technologies indicates that 63 percent of the Indian CIOs interviewed believe a lack of digital literacy amongst senior executives could be hampering business growth. Moreover the study shows that 67 percent of the management team does not understand the value that IT already brings to the business.

Today most senior executives look at the cost of tools and think that they can get more employees at the same cost. But throwing in more employees in the problem is not going to solve it. All I have to tell them, is it’s sometimes good to remember, "A miser's son is generally a spendthrift."

The Indian IT industry is growing and to compete with the global players, it's high time that Indian companies start thinking differently. For that to happen, we need our senior executives to get out of the typical Indian mindset of cost savings, but start thinking of transforming IT that can add value to the business in the long run.


Please do let us know what you think.
Christo Jacob
Managing Editor
editor@siliconindia.com