Tag: transformation

Whiteboard vs Keyboard Services | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

I recently went to dinner with a CIO who talked about having two major service providers in his company’s portfolio – an Indian provider and Accenture. He told me he uses both providers aggressively. We were talking about the fact that both providers have similar rate cards, large numbers of offshore workers, and they both come to him with an unending set of transformational ideas. I asked him how he chooses between the two.

Here’s his methodology:

  • When the business problem requires a whiteboard – in other words, he wants the provider to lead change in his organization (and typically that’s a transformational situation) – he uses Accenture.
  • When the business problem requires a keyboard – or people to execute against a plan he has already developed and he will closely manage – he uses the Indian service provider.

He added that he’s not sure it’s possible for either provider to become the other. He explained that when he asks Accenture to operate from a keyboard mentality, they fight him for the steering wheel. They want to lead and want to drive the transformation. Alternatively, when he asks the Indian provider to lead, they defer to his management team and do as they’re told.

So he says he came to accept that both behaviors are effective. He needs each at different times, so he should not ask one to be the other. Both are valuable assets.

Services clients should keep this CIO’s perspective in mind. There are whiteboard opportunities and there are keyboard opportunities. If you ask providers to be something they’re not, you’ll get a frustrated response. Choose carefully.

Breakthrough Metrics for Solutioning a Customer Transformation Journey | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

There’s no silver bullet for driving change; it’s a challenge in any organization and services providers and their clients struggle with this. In working with providers and buyers on transformation deals over the years, I observed the need for breakthrough metrics to drive the change through the buyer’s organization.

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, transformation needs to start with defining the business outcome goal from the customer perspective and then translating it into issues and organizational implications that the delivery organization can align against. Those issues include metrics that you must clearly articulate at three levels in the buyer’s organization:

  1. C-level vision – Here the highest level of metrics calibrate the benefits and what needs to change in the status quo to accommodate the benefits. In the event you find you can’t get to the goal with what you conceive for the journey, you need to start again and conceive the journey differently.
  2. Direct reports responsible for executing on the vision – These metrics focus on the implications for the delivery organization.
  3. Technical talent – Metrics at this level focus on the tools, talent, and process changes that the goal affects. What are the details that the architects need to understand as they solution the goal?

Having metrics at each level puts business transformation not in light of those who are doing it but, rather, those who are experiencing it.

Service providers need to keep in mind that this shouldn’t be a roadmap with a detailed plan. But people at each level in the client enterprise need assistance in understanding what they are trying to do, how they have to measure themselves against that goal, and what the implications are to technology, talent, policy, process, and sourcing. The metrics can’t be prescriptive.

If you’re an executive, you can break through your organization’s obstacles to change by driving change through the benefit goal and the metrics that allow the organization to understand and configure against the goal. First define the experience you’re looking for. Then ask how to accomplish that. You’ll end up with a set of metrics that defines what you have to do to get to that experience.

As an example, let’s say you want to improve the speed of the employee onboarding process. What are the technologies you have to put in place? What talent issues do you have to think through? What policies and processes do you need to think through? What are the consequences of changes to those technologies, talent, policies, and processes? Now you have the metric and sub-metrics that help guide those implications.

Once the client organization is committed to the transformation journey at each level, the service provider can then engage with them around how that should be done.


Photo credit: Flickr

Technology Specialists – The New Dinosaur in Making | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

Are you a brilliant Java coder? An expert in the R programming language? A phenomenal database administrator? A brilliant software seller? Sorry to say it, but you’re likely to soon be a member of the “extinct club.”

In corroboration of Scottish economist Adam Smith’s concept of the division of labor, organizations have historically preferred and hired specialists to develop their technologies, and other specialists to sell them. These masters of their craft had acclaimed expertise in their specific areas. And despite the evolution from mainframes to microcomputers to PCs to client server to ERP to the web, it was relatively easy for them to upskill or move to an adjacent skill, as the technologies adopted by companies rarely changed in their fundamental structure.

This gave rise to an “I am a developer, let me develop, I am in sales, let me sell” model within technology companies. It worked well, as enterprises persisted with outdated technologies they had intertwined their business models, and the cost of replacement was prohibitively high. This persistence created the specialists, who were assured of their place in the high echelons of technology as the landscape was not changing fast enough. This also gave rise to the outsourcing industry, which was leveraged to support these outdated systems and reduce the cost of management.

However, those times are gone. Due to digital transformation, organizations expect their professionals to understand not only the technology, but also business users’ perspectives, technology ease of use, consumption flexibility, and creation of top line impact. Development or sales specialists lacking a comprehensive business view are quickly losing their relevance and competitive edge.

Lack of relevance and competitive edge can, and will, also effect many technology providers. This is due, in large part, to the fact that as the cost of consumption of hardware and software decreases, organizations are increasingly willing to dismantle their existing systems and embrace newer models, e.g., migrating from one SaaS CRM to another. The idea of “fail fast, fail better” is gaining traction within enterprises, and technology companies need to align their business models accordingly to serve them.

The reality is that this sea change requires full-scale overhaul of technology providers’ entire business model – including their investment strategy, product roadmap, partnership ecosystem, and go-to-market approach. Yet executives in these businesses have made their careers and big money by developing and selling technology in a certain manner that promotes status quo. Think about a large software vendor and its partners who earn millions of dollars by just providing “certificate training” for their technologies. If the technologies become redundant, their bottom line will be severely impacted. Therefore, they will invest all their efforts in ensuring their clients stick to their technology platforms, irrespective of whether they are outdated and unable to cater to the business. Of course, there are buyers that do not want to rock the boat by changing something until it is really broken. This comfortable nexus has been going on for ages.

But the times are changing very fast. Technology providers that view their buyers as “cash cows,” rather than valuable partners to be helped to achieve business objectives, will fast lose relevance. The providers that succeed will: 1) embrace this new world of disruption, and create meaningful solutions that are more than beautified version of their outdated platforms wrapped in a pretense of user friendliness; and 2) make their prized specialists realize the new norm of the business wherein they need to at least understand, if not master, the art of viewing the world from a business and end-user perspective that incorporates a holistic paradigm beyond their usual tunnel vision.

If he were alive today, Adam Smith might well have changed his tune, instead suggesting malleable skills to enable technology companies’ success in these uncertain times of technology.


Photo credit: Flickr

Why Is Accenture So Successful? | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

Accenture’s set of service offerings is incredibly broad-based. They serve clients in an incredible number of business processes. They provide services in every geography. They deal with a huge variety of industries. How can a firm do so many things at the same time with such excellence?

Simply put, the answer is people. Using our framework assessing companies’ characteristics necessary for success, Accenture’s team of exceptional talent stands out. The provider is able to deal with a profusion of diversity in processes, industries and geographies because it aligns its brand, go-to-market approach, portfolio and business model with high-performance talent.

Assessment framework technology service companies

Accenture takes on clients’ big problems that require a transformational journey. Typically the challenge has a technology component or basis. And typically it requires the use of exceptionally deep talent.

Accenture’s relentless focus on high-end talent deployed against big business problems enables the provider to make decisions around what not to do. They are a talent engine, so they let others take on the roles of owning the technologies and servers. They play well in the ecosystem.

They also exit spaces that are highly commoditized where a provider can deploy less talented, cheaper resources. Accenture stays focused on big problems that require transformational journeys, which require high-end, exceptional talent. That’s why they’re extraordinarily successful in providing services in a bewildering variety of processes and industries.

Digital Transformation – Will IBM Attain its Aspirational Leadership Position? | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

Everest Group had the opportunity to attend IBM’s APAC analyst day in India on 11-12 June 2015. Business and technology leaders from IBM presented their offering portfolio, demos, and real life transformative case studies with active participation from their clients. One thing that stood out was how Big Blue is communicating not only its technology vision, offerings, and organizational commitment toward open technologies, but also its internal transformation to serve clients and reclaim its technology leadership position. It realizes that the “old IBM” ways will no longer work, and it needs to become more nimble and innovative, and play an important part in shaping the technology disruption the digital age has brought onto us.

What’s happening?

Earlier this year, IBM aligned its go-to-market strategy around key industry verticals. It also created internal structures to make myriad of its offerings, technology groups, services business, sales and marketing, and its research lab work in sync. It believes this will help create solutions that are required to leverage digital technologies, and thereby not only redefine itself, but also create a new ecosystem of product and service providers around it.

Going back in the history, IBM truly transformed the technology industry when it invented the Mainframe. And while today’s technology becomes tomorrow’s legacy, no one can deny that the Mainframe was a historical system that shaped and created the technology industry as we know it today.

However, since then, IBM became a nuts and bolts company providing middleware, desktops, and back-end efficiency solutions focused on enterprise computing. While it did introduce incremental innovation and acquire many technology companies, it did not play a meaningful role in shaping the industry vision. It continued to invest in its research labs, and its products were always considered leaders in enterprise computing. But it hasn’t been a leader in true enterprise technology transformations such as the rise of ERP, virtualization, SaaS, or IaaS.

This has changed. The analyst meeting demonstrated that digital has become the new pivot around which IBM will take back its earlier pedestal position of being the company that forms, shapes, and guides the technology industry. This story was ably supported by multiple client interactions during the event. Clients say that this is not the IBM they had earlier worked with, or had expected to work with.

IBM’s much publicized partnerships with digital native firms like Facebook and Twitter, and leading user experience and design companies such as Apple, are an important but small part of its digital journey. The bigger part is moving away from its traditional way of working, and realizing that it must play a key role in the digital everywhere environment. Its increased focus and core commitment toward open technologies is highly apparent. And it has always had the technology, scale, and reach to transform businesses. Now, the muscle it’s putting behind Softlayer and BlueMix, its mobility play, and its investments in analytics, the Internet of Things (IoT), and Watson have the potential to transform not only its clients but itself as well.

Is there any challenge?

With its go-to-market alignment with industry verticals, IBM can bring effective solutions to clients looking to transform their businesses. However, disruption in most industries is happening from the outside, (e.g., Uber to the taxi industry, Airbnb to hospitality, Apple Pay to banks, and Google cars to automotive), rather than within. Therefore, a rigid structure around industries may not work well. IBM will need to ensure that its technology, industry verticals, and innovation groups talk to each other, an area where it has historically struggled.

Moreover, monetization of some of these innovations will be a long, drawn out process. IBM has had significant growth challenges, and has shed many of its businesses. For its growth and profitability to return –which should be the big drivers along with reclaiming its innovator status – IBM has to do a lot more. It has historically been viewed as a company that helps clients’ operations run more efficiently; it now needs to carefully position and communicate its willingness and ability to partner in clients’ growth.

Where does IBM go from here?

In addition to the digital technologies IBM possesses, other of its strong strategic initiatives include: internal transformation around reskilling the workforce toward innovation and design thinking; commitment to open technologies; collaborative alignment between its services business and its technology groups; renewed commitment toward client centricity; improved sales effectiveness; and focus on solving core industry problems.

IBM’s changes have been pushed right from the CEO’s office, and IBM executives believe results will be visible in the next 6 to 12 months. IBM needs to play a dual role in which it helps some clients disrupt their industries and business models, and assists others sail through the digital disruption. It again needs to become a technology innovator. While it’s a difficult task, we believe it has the needed technology, vision, and now internal alignment to achieve these objectives.

How Service Providers Can Illuminate Clients’ Path to Transformation | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

One of the biggest issues facing executives today is that they see the need to change their organization through automation, analytics, or other big ideas that are clearly vetted, but they struggle to drive the change. Their organization is reluctant or frightened to change, much like horses in a steeplechase race that shy at jumping the fences. Consequently, service providers are frustrated. They see potential for their business, but they’re unable to move from project to program. How can a provider help clients to jump the obstacles instead of shying away from them?

How can a provider illuminate the path forward to transformation and get the client on board for change? Let’s start by talking about what doesn’t work – white papers. No executive these days reads white papers. It just doesn’t happen. As I’ve blogged before, they’re too dense, too theoretical and too preachy.  And they’re nakedly self-interested.

So what are the tools that enable clients to jump the fence? At Everest Group we’ve been thinking about and researching this. Executives need simple yet rigorous, relentlessly objective instruments that they can use to challenge their organization. And once they examine an instrument, a clear path forward opens up behind it.

What would such an instrument look like? It might be a maturity index showing competitors’ degree of progress in the field. Everest Group’s PEAK Matrix™ is another example of a first step in instrumentation; it illuminates providers’ capabilities in the marketplace.

Every organization is unique, and they struggle with how to apply transformation or disruptive technologies to their uniqueness. A set of objective instruments allows executives to have a conversation in their organization and challenge their organization. The organization can then ask for help and imagine a roadmap – without a provider telling them what the roadmap should be.

Simple but rigorous instruments will illuminate the way to transformation and assist in the organization internalizing the path forward through the challenges.


Photo credit: Flickr

Wipro Takes on New Challenges in Driving Transformation | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

Wipro just hired Abid Ali Neemuchwala as COO and group president. Clearly the provider is setting up a succession plan for him to take over Wipro from current CEO, TK Kurien, who has been driving the firm’s transformation. This is an intriguing move as Wipro appears to be succeeding in the turnaround. So it makes sense that the industry is questioning the move. If the turnaround is, indeed, happening at Wipro, why bring in an outsider?

Abid comes to Wipro from TCS with a pedigree of having run the TCS BPO business. This is a big step up for him, from running a $2 billion business to a $9 billion business. The good news is Wipro is giving him at least a year to learn the ropes.

It’s interesting to reflect on why Wipro did this. I don’t believe the firm is stepping away from the transformation that TK Kurien has been driving. Nor do I think Wipro looks to capture some of the TCS magic and execution capability. I believe the firm is reinforcing its need to continue changing and is bringing in an outside perspective to drive change. This move follows in the footsteps of Infosys, which similarly brought in outside leadership.

Wipro gave TK formidable power, and five years, to drive significant change and transformation. Like any transformational plan, it has been painful and has taken time. But as I blogged before, the transformation is starting to show promise with Wipro wins picking up in the marketplace just as TK’s five years comes to a close.

So why bring in an outsider? I believe the answer is that the journey has just begun. The services industry is at an inflection point. It is clear that with changing technologies, client expectations and business models, leadership in the existing space does not guarantee leadership in the future. I think Wipro understands this and is looks to challenge its organization with fresh perspectives.

Running faster with the old model will not allow for leadership in the future. Fresh perspectives and augmenting existing talent is necessary to give Wipro the best chance at being a leader as the market evolves.

The challenges Abid will need to take on will shape and continue to drive Wipro to change how it delivers services, takes advantage of new technologies such as the digital and analytics space, and how it deals with changing client expectations demanding value beyond labor arbitrage. And Abid will bring new perspectives on how to successfully guide Wipro through the transition into the new business models of SaaS, BPaaS, platforms and consumption-based IT and business processes.

I think it’s a good move.


Photo credit: Wipro

Digital Transformation: P&L for the CMO? Really? | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

Sigmund Freud once said, “Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.” Had he added a phrase about fear of business ownership, the father of psychoanalysis could easily have been talking about most Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) in the current world of digital transformation. The freedom given by digital disruption to transform marketing function may come with a frightening responsibility of owning a P&L.

Today’s CMOs are expected to leverage disruptive technologies, and thus are receiving more technology funding than their IT counterparts. However, many CEOs will push their CMOs to own P&L if they need that funding for digital initiatives.

While most marketers dread the prospect of P&L ownership, the reality is that digital transformation has the power to enable them to assume a more strategic and central leadership role. And mobility, analytics, social platforms, and cloud services – many of which are available outside the control of corporate IT – can give them the needed ammunition to transform marketing into a business builder and create real impact than being a strategic overhead.

Those marketers looking forward to the challenge realize that unlike the traditional models, the rapid digital transformation of the marketing function enables the CMO’s office to influence and generate revenue, as well as run operations efficiently. Digital transformation provides significantly more engaging, flexible, and agile platforms to attract, retain, and grow consumers than traditional models. They allow “fail fast” with manageable cost repercussions. These new mechanisms give marketers direct, quicker, and clearer access to the end-consumer. Marketers now have the technology to run data-driven real time analysis of consumer buying behaviour and enhance their strategies accordingly.

However, to make this a reality, marketers need to work more closely with different departments within their organization, and develop perspectives on the various business units. While their lack of knowhow of organizational operations will be a recipe for disaster, increasing use of collaboration platforms and process digitization can help. Marketers can now communicate and collaborate with their counterparts from other units more effectively in a shorter time span leveraging digital services.

It’s always challenging to transform a cost center to own a P&L. In marketing’s case, it’s not only about revenue attribution, but also:

  1. a complete change in the thought process of the marketers themselves
  2. their self-perception and confidence in running a business (rather than just enabling it)
  3. staking claims at the high seats of the corporate hierarchy
  4. changes in the hiring, incentives, and retention strategies of marketing organizations

P&L ownership also impacts the way marketers are perceived in their organizations, as well as senior business leaders’ attitude toward them. Marketers will have to undertake a lot of internal selling of the idea. And a lot of organizational machinery will need to be oiled and transformed to make the marketing department own a P&L.

Most client conversations indicate this is still a utopia. However, some executives do believe it’s high time that the digital transformation makes marketing more accountable. They consider the CMO to be everything related to a customer (Chief Experience Officer, Chief Customer Officer, etc.) and believe that marketers now have the right technology and tools to create real business impact.

The onus is on the CMOs, and the opportunity is vast. However, they need to get out of their mindset as a business support function, where they are assisting businesses to leverage digital services much like an external consultant, and instead take center stage. But it’s not going to be easy.

Sigmund Freud today would probably have said “CMOs who want to enjoy the freedom bestowed by digital transformation must not scare away from the responsibility of the P&L.”

EXL Positions Itself for Growth with Acquisition of Blue Slate | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

Earlier this month EXL acquired Blue Slate Solutions and positioned itself for growth through transformation services. But the move also reflects a broader industry move.

Blue Slate is a consulting firm that drives operational transformation. The acquisition looks to be a move to buttress and increase EXL’s ability to add value to clients through driving large-scale transformational projects. It also improves EXL’s industry expertise in critical areas such as healthcare.

And it will better position EXL to compete. The Blue Slate acquisition matches Genpact’s investments to add similar capabilities and also allows EXL to compete more effectively with Accenture and IBM on large-scale transformational opportunities.

So it’s a nice acquisition. But it also has broader significance. As we think holistically about this, EXL is joining a broader industry move ­of players positioning themselves to transcend or add value beyond operational excellence.

The Industry-Wide Significance of Accenture’s PureApps Acquisition | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

Accenture recently announced its acquisition of PureApps, a UK-based Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) provider.  Our understanding is that it’s a full-service provider for all Oracle Hyperion EPM and BA solutions. Nevertheless, PureApps is a small firm and the revenue won’t make a noticeable difference to Accenture. So why is Accenture buying PureApps? My opinion: they are buying a niche player as an influence point with a stakeholder group that is growing in importance in the technology and in BPO services.

PureApps’ services in implementing Oracle Hyperion give them relationships at the office of the CFO. As I recently blogged, the office of the CFO is growing in influence for tech spend, especially in the transformation space. With this acquisition, Accenture gains the advantage of a set of services and immediate credibility in serving CFOs.

This is a nice — and important — acquisition as it gives Accenture the following benefits:

  • Enables more relevance and a counter play to the CFO access sphere that Deloitte and the Big Four consulting firms currently enjoy for large-scale transformation projects.
  • Strengthens Accenture’s position in the European markets.

Bottom line: the acquisition is a smart play for stable growth in the core consulting/transformation space, which will continue to grow as the digital world gains momentum.

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