
NASSCOM Emergeout Conclave 2009
In the NASSCOM Emergeout Conclave 2009 that happened today in Taj Connemara, Chennai following were discussed.
Focus, Sales & Marketing tips
- Compare AppLabs (Won’t do anything other than Testing) and FxLabs (Yes to everything)
- Latch on to your customer’s cash flow, not back office, not to cost centre
- email and call prospects from India, but meetings face to face in USA (or your target market). Tradeshows don’t work (50-100 out of 1500 people in a tradeshow should be targeted before the end of it at minimum). Direct presence is very important.
- Webinars are effective, quality of leads are very high
- Google Ads are only for contacts. Converting contacts to prospect is a very labour intensive task
- Focus more margin business (Not on topline alone). Everyone has a pain, you should have a painkiller you can sell
- Customers abroad are now open to working with SME. Use data from your own last quarter, not last quarters
- Entrepreneurs have Zero Business or Marketing Knowledge (in general), yet they spend not more than 5% on Marketing & Sales.
- Salespeople can do repetitive business only, that leaves some else to do the game-changing thoughts & work out strategy
- IT Leaders should learn from Politicians
- Politicians always Play to their galleries
- Politicians ensure they get themselves to most attractive position
- No EGO/Emotion & No Baggage
- Maximize Value the best
- Realize their weakness
Indian Domestic IT Market (most of the below points were from the panel chaired by Anil Bakht of Eastern Software Systems)
- India Domestic IT has huge challenges, who are we fooling?. Can one of the large SIs today stop US/UK and look only at India. All the talk about e-governance and the size are all junk, especially for SMEs. Unless Biggies start a trend here, invent ways to make it work, this is not going to work. They have to educate and create the market
- Pricing has failed too, too high for domestic consumption
- We always have in-house teams as competition in every Indian Enterprise, they will outsource their core business processes but IT will always be done in-house. No respect for specialization. Partnerships don’t work in India, Tier II Companies are a little willing, but Tier I companies are not. All said cost of failure is low in India
- Longer Decision Cycle. Even 50-100 Lakh deals take 6-12 months. No eagerness to go to market faster and get business advantage
- No commitment from company, even to commit their own people to work with IT vendors in supporting them
- No co-ownership/partnership or willingness
- Globally Fixed-Bid Projects are 35%, but in India, 90-95% are fixed bids
Tips
- Start believing in yourself, start believing in your company and solution
- Start charging for your solution/service right from first go or ask the customer to take a walk – no free work. You have to be ruthless and arrogant in Indian Market
- Cash is KING
- Risk reward model is only for biggies
- Prepare in your projection & expense spreadsheets, cost/salary for yourself – make money
- Try for two quarters and if nothing works, close
Mr.Phaneesh Murthy, CEO of iGate
- Disruption and Discontinuity, Black Swans have landed in our life, once in a lifetime activity. By definition of a black swan is that all the parameters are now same for everyone, that’s the beauty of the situation
- 80’s accounting firm & SAP created the split of product & implementation
- 90’s – Indian companies are doing it faster & cheaper
- Current event is a cost disruption
- $900B is current bank losses, 1.5-2 Trillion has to happen in total, financial sector spend is reducing 20-25%. Other industries are cutting by 5%. Massive amounts of cost reductions
- Pitney Bowes innovated in last century by having convenience of franking machines inside Walmart stores
- 60Billion out of 1300Billion – only 5% of the IT Services market is addressed by Indian IT firms, so not all slots are taken
- If you have never failed, you have never pushed the envelope
- OUTCOME BASED = Process Innovation + Software Innovation. With this model you become Market Minus for the Company, most of the others are COST PLUS for the company. Take control of business & technology. Partner to offer outcome-based pricing. Control technology costs. Customer pays for business value. Between from now to 2013, 20% of world will move to this model
- In the last two decades, Indian IT Industry as a whole screwed the whole industry. We were the guardians. In 1980, the 90s we created a fear, we Pooh Poohed on all the great case tools that came. Biggies don’t want that to change In last 20 years, there is no significant development in software industry
- Create your own rules, change the model. People are measured not by what they do, but they are measured on number of people who report to them
- While INFY & Wipro were doing the same, same clients. In Branding INFY in early days it was about building the image of a clean company, filling GAAP reports in Six Countries, Nine different languages and so on
- Reasonable people will never get done anything, unreasonable people will get it done. So push!
- I am optimist, I am not that optimistic about plain KPO, it was a supply and demand side constraint (BUM Seat Model)
