The panel discussion titled ‘Outsourcing in the Indian Context: Issues and Challenges’ at Interop Mumbai 2009 sought to gain an insight into some of the pain points of Indian organizations looking to outsource their IT to IT service providers. The discussion also had another aim—to understand the service provider’s side of the story.

Moderated by Dr Anu Gokhale, Professor and Coordinator – Computer Systems Program, Illinois State University, USA, the panel included an equal representation from both the service provider and the customer side of the industry.

On board were Venguswamy Ramaswamy, Global Head, Small and Medium Business, TCS, and Jawahar Bekay, Chief Operating Officer, Microland who added the service provider perspective.
The customer viewpoint was put forth by Vikas Gadre, CIO, Tata Chemicals and Arun Gupta, Customer Care Associate & Group CTO, Shoppers Stop. The panel also included Hari Rajagopalachari, Executive Director, PricewaterhouseCoopers who brought in a neutral, analyst perspective to the discussion.

The panel discussion started with the CIOs putting forth their view that the lure of higher revenue offered by the dollar in comparison with the rupee saw service providers focusing less on the Indian market. Further, that the vendor focus was now being shifted on growing the customer base within India, due to the global economic slowdown. The service providers opined that serving the Indian market was not easy given the dynamic and agile nature of project requirements as compared to foreign markets—this was preventing them from addressing the Indian market efficiently.

Rajagopalachari felt that the Indian economy is efficiency and process driven while the US economy is innovation driven. As a result, the approach to these two markets needs to be different.
There was a strong opinion from both the customer representation on the panel and the audience, that service providers have a higher level of respect for foreign customers than Indian customers, in terms of delivery. They believed that service providers are more flexible with overseas customers in terms of changes in requirements, ensuring SLAs and credit duration for payments.

Another widespread view was that service providers did not understand the requirements of Indian organizations clearly—the solutions being offered were tailored to suit overseas markets. Citing the example of a State Bank of India implementation, Ramaswamy of TCS countered this view by saying that the total customer population of this implementation was one third that of North America’s population. He thus inferred that service providers now have larger revenues coming in from the growing Indian market and that they are working towards understanding Indian customer requirements and providing the necessary skill sets to execute projects successfully.