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L.N. Revathy

If everybody's good at something, how does one gain that edge that makes the difference? Read on...

OFFSHORE outsourcing is seeing new dimensions. With the largest of the large players taking to offshore outsourcing, the complexity of managing customer relationships has grown manifold. No longer are companies talking about project management.

The new mantra is `Program Management' that entails managing the entire offshore outsourced programme of the customer, including managing relationships across geographies and working with a battery of Chief Information Officers and others of a single customer.

Software companies are innovatively managing these partnerships that are created globally, with people networks operating in complex structures that lead to forging and dismantling many intra and inter company links, depending on the nature of the relationship, the volume of business, geographic spread of the customer and types of solutions provided.

Cognizant Technology Solutions, for instance, has leveraged the onsite and offshore operational model in program management, customer relationship and loyalty management.

"It is difficult to differentiate the top-tier Indian vendors from each other today.

From a high level perspective, all are SEI CMM Level 5 assessed — have excellent and diverse technology skills and all are low-cost.

But on a closer inspection, one will notice that these vendors are all different, and certain ones are better than the others at certain things," says Stephanie Moore of Giga Information Group.

Now, here we can differentiate between Cognizant and the rest. Cognizant has a three-tier engagement governance structure — Steering Committee, Program Management Office and Project Management Office.

The top layer of this pyramid — the Steering Committee (the highest body) ensures alignment of business goals and engagement goals.

It provides executive sponsorship and support, aligns the customer's stakeholders with the goals of the program, besides handling change management issues, including communicating the value of the change within the client's organisation.

Unlike many offshore software service firms, Cognizant's operating structure is such that the members of the Steering Committee include the Executive Management members, who are closer to the customer locations in the US or Europe. "The Steering Committee's proximity to the customers helps us understand the pulse of the customer's needs, the organisational relationship and change dynamics better" explains Lakshmi Narayanan, President and COO, Cognizant.

"Our unique onsite and offshore model with the executive management closer to the customer, has helped us excel the fourth generation of offshore outsourcing and also see win rates in excess of 50 per cent in large-scale strategic outsourcing deals," Lakshmi Narayanan says.

Cognizant has the Program Management Office at the next level.

This basically helps in analysing the customer's portfolio in IT investments and prioritising the offshore outsourcing programme, reviewing the scope and progress of all projects, managing cross team dependencies and handling communication and reporting to the Steering Committee.

The Project Management comes into action only in the next stage. The Project Management Office includes the entire gamut of management capabilities — from risk and schedule management, knowledge and quality management, resource and communication management, issues and time management. Every aspect as it were.

"SEI-CMM Level 5 and P-CMM Level 5 processes have helped us define and implement the finest processes with respect to quality and people management," Lakshmi Narayanan says and points out that knowledge management was becoming a critical differentiator for Cognizant.

"We have more than 60 knowledge harvesters and knowledge auditors, disseminating lessons and best practices through Cognizant's powerful knowledge management system and other offline means as well."

This seamless three-tier governance and program management model appears to have worked well for Cognizant, reflecting in a high win rate and high retention levels.

According to Stephanie, Cognizant's unique model is a differentiator for clients of offshore firms, that often find Indian vendor relationship management weak. These firms are critical of the Indian vendors' support with new technology strategy, direction and innovation.

lnr@thehindu.co.in

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