The rising rupee against dollar has made the Indian IT industry to think and relook at fundamentals of their business model. Indian IT primarily has been hosting outsource work was mainly because of its cost effectiveness for execution of large projects involving large number of resources. Time has changed, Indian IT has gained a lot of expertise in this area to now provide solutions that are not merely an outsource work.
The next wave of Indian IT will be one of the most exciting phase, Indian IT will have to re-introduce themselves as IT solutions provider for business problems and not limit just to execution of IT design done in the west. This level of engagement actually asks for premium rate and will help the Indian IT to move up the value chain.
There has been discussions happening around sustaining Indian IT by introducing IP, patent based solutioning so as to receive returns repetitively on a the one time developed solutions. I absolutely advocate this and is the most obvious step to move from where Indian IT is today.
If Indian IT wants to enjoy the Next WAVE, it need to add following features to their Surf boards,
- IT companies should leverage their existing domain knowledge to produce innovative products with self-owned IP. The self-owned IP reduces a lot of efforts for producing new solutions in same domain by reusing the development. This makes it very cost effective and will produce huge returns more than that of general service providing business.
- Diversify in domain expertise, identify domains that the company can best deliver solutions in, target resources and train to raise their expertise in respective domain so as to make them understand business and not just technology. This will ensure that what will be produced will be a complete solution and not get restricted to only IT execution.
- At times it is quiet possible that there is not enough amount of domain expertise to back the technology solutions for a particular domain, in this case it is a smart thing to acquire small players with good domain knowledge to act as catalyst in raising your own expertise and also to gain some ready clients.
- Innovation will be a key to success in future of Indian IT, as IPs and patents will be something that will be banked upon, a world class innovation (R&D) center is the need of coming IT era. The job of this team will be to constantly study the global market and be part of global research wherever possible, be an active participant and closely watch global IT, then just acting as a recipient. Retrospectively make changes to the development of IP such that IP quality meets latest market requirement and standards so as to avoid any sudden competition.
- The above tasks if executed correctly, the IT companies can then mark themselves as “Expert” in specific domain and get engaged at early stage of the projects providing premium services at premium rate.
- Indian IT should be now more proactive to movements in the market e.g. they should be part of web 3.0 then to just act as user of the same. They need to be part of technology incubation then just using it.
They should get involve in development of electronic business communication standards (B2B) in their domain e.g. HL7 in health sector, PIDX in petroleum etc. It will be easier to market products developed in a specific domain if one is involved in developing standards for the same. - Indian IT company has always been sceptical about outsourcing work to another local company with smaller stature, this mindset has to change, to make up for lack of specialised resources it will be better to outsource work to company that has experience and specialization, thus truly acting in a service oriented fashion.
- If the companies now start closely watching and are part of global IT research, they will be well aware of immediate and future need of skills. With this information, a collective effort should be made to positively influence Indian education system at various streams to align the academic curriculum with improved syllabus and or courses that can produce job ready workforce. Parallel to mainstream graduation cycle a parallel recognised and specialized courses and certification should be introduced, e.g. just like we have Charted Accountant Courses and exams, Enterprise IT Architect should also be introduced.
- Research oriented/focussed education will also be a key in growing Indian IT in future. Even small academic institutions (schools and/or universities) should be encouraged to host research oriented curriculum’s to compete with world class education. The idea should be to host IT research that will impact global market. Current IT research happens in universities in west and hence they are first to introduce new technology in most of the cases. The Local private sector company should actively fund this types of research at various levels.
- Concentrate on local market opportunities, use it to prove required expertise and develop enough IPs as it will cost low at this engagement and reuse the same for global markets at higher rates. Use more entry level resources in local market engagements with enough guidance from higher level resources thus using it as a training ground.
- Change the employee attitude from “just THINK or Just EXECUTE” to “THINK and also EXECUTE”, increase employee capability to allrounders, reduce extra dedicated resources, providing with more challenging environment.
- The companies should actively build frameworks for solutioning, technology, governance and processes that will provide platform for rapid development and execution of new projects thus ensuring involvement of less number of resources.
- Engage only small and expert teams to deliver high value projects, this will ensure satisfactory compensation for individuals. It is very important now to encourage self-development in every employee by providing time allowance. This shall be in addition to the occasional trainings. The employee should spend his/her allocated time for self learning and self research, this will motivate them and help revive their skills in ideating and enhance their creativity.
Now that the guidelines are all available, it is important to identify what domains can the IT companies gain expertise, and come up with innovative solutions. Following are just a few examples,
- Green Business, any solutions that will reduce the global warming.
i. Monitoring to allow low pollution zone
ii. Carbon Credit Trading - Artificial Intelligence in web, Semantic web 2.0 + AI, context based search engines etc.
- Use of Graphics on web to reach less educated people.
- Content analysis to produce self understanding systems, pattern recognition in business process resulting in auto optimization.
- Mobile gateways for every business interaction.
- Wireless solutions in sectors like Retail, using RFIDs.
- Education in rural areas through IT.
- Gaming – Produce applications supporting Alternate Reality Games e.g. SecondLife.com.
- Applications for semantic web and or social networking sites that can produce mass impact.
- Health sector - Application faclitating distance treatment.
- Financial - Asset management.
The idea is to not just try and sustain Indian IT but more than that we need to sow the IT seeds here in India for the next IT era. Every Indian IT company and academic institutions should share common vision: INDIAN IT to influence GLOBAL IT and let the world get inspired from us.
Must Read Resources:
http://www.techtrails.com/features/an-opportunity-for-indian-it.aspx
[The Rising Rupee: An Opportunity for Indian IT, By Sudhakar Ram - Chairman and MD Mastek Ltd.]
http://dst.gov.in/admin_finance/rs_210/sq103.htm
["Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE)" is to prepare the Indian science and technology for a possible leadership position in 2020.]
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2007/09/11/stories/2007091150340800.htm
[Time for IT cos to change tack ]
http://www.techtrails.com/interviews/new-paradigms-for-the-third-wave-2.aspx
[New Paradigms for the Third Wave, Interview with Sanjay Deshmukh - Head-AMO at Mastek]
