Amit Nagar, Quinnox Incorporation's chief sales officer (CSO) talks to Pankaj Maru of CyberMedia News, about IT service providers' role in today's business, its outsourcing and advantages, along with significance of development centers and impact of the current financial crisis on Indian IT.

What is the role of an IT service provider in today's business?

Every CIO/CTO is being challenged to deliver results measured almost entirely in terms of value that their organizations deliver to the business. Be it reducing operational costs, increasing business speed, eliminating inventory costs, enhancing customer acquisition, on-boarding and service experience, expediting the timeframes for mergers, acquisitions and divestitures... the challenge might be that the CEO or the board is asking them to take-up and deliver.

Unconditionally aligning itself with the CIO/CTO's goals and creating an engagement structure that organizes internal business and support function around these goals, is perhaps the single most significant role of an IT service provider in today’s business. Where you deliver talent, technology, software, infrastructure, hardware, consulting, etc - it has to be all about giving the CIO/CTO the killer ability to deliver business results.

IT service providers have to, in turn, understand the various dimensions along which they themselves can add value to their clients and have to be innovative.

At Quinnox, it's not sufficient for us to think of ourselves as just singularly providing the cost benefit of a delivery model. There are tremendous other benefits from our repertoire of solutions and knowledge base that include domain skills and solutions in Retail, Manufacturing, Banking and Financial services.

They extend to service level, metrics, performance management and governance models that can help our clients improve accountability and predictability of our IT services. Our tools, automation frameworks, reusable assets and IP bring tremendous business velocity benefits for our clients. We extend these to architecture and planning, project management, technology and research, technology proving laboratories, etc.

Everything is aligned with the clients via our relationship management model, Qcare, that addresses the end-to-end requirements of our clients and build strategic long-term client relationships.

What are the advantages of outsourcing IT services to India and how can it help businesses grow?

The strength of any enterprise is determined not just by the workforce quality, but by the depth and quality of its middle and senior management. Same is true for India. As much as the talent “gold rush” to India began as simply a cost arbitrage in the mid to late 80s for lower level talent, the “experience curve” advantage of India has provided is a massive edge – largely unmatched to other countries with outsourcing options.

Today India’s talent leadership in domain, business, technology, process, architecture, quality and project management continues to enhance its superior position on the outsourcing map. Businesses around the world stand to gain from this superior position, in turn creating a talent edge by enhancing and filling holes in the fabric of their middle / senior management talent pools. This is where India is showing unsurpassed value in the race for intellectual talent.

Other advantages that India has created for itself from having serviced almost every major corporation on the planet over the last 20-30 years, is strong expertise in process, architecture, technology, governance, metrics, quality, industry solutions, domain, management consulting, program management, implementation, planning... It is no more about cost.

Most IT companies have set up their research and development center or have invested in center of excellence in India. How active is Quinnox on this front?

To enrich our customer-centric approach and enhance the organization’s ability in providing effective and efficient solutions, Quinnox has set up a Technology Research Group (TRG), which focuses on creating expertise and best-in-breed services in specific areas of technology, industry or products.

Our India center is a training and development hub, where our strong in-house team of technology and domain experts helps us build our capabilities and competence in specific tools and services like: SAP, Software AG, Web Technologies, Capital Markets, AMS, Independent Testing and others. TRG combines deep domain capability and technology excellence, with a focus on continuous innovation.

For the size we are, I don’t think many companies would invest this kind of time, effort and money for R&D. I have to believe that our investment, when measured as a percentage of revenue, is probably in the top ten percentile, which for a midsize company like Quinnox, shows a clear commitment to not just research and innovation, but also to India.

Will the current financial downturn affect the demand and supply of IT services globally? Your views on this.

The US slowdown is definitely impacting the IT industry. Financial crisis's ripple-effect is being felt in India and across the world. I strongly believe that this downturn is a mere phase and the Indian IT industry will pick up pace soon. In the long run, the Indian IT-ITES sectors will continue to maintain a healthy growth rate and will be a marked shift towards value, productivity gains and innovation

The meltdown is likely to throw up lots of opportunities for companies operating in the “third wave”. Considering cut in IT budgets, there's a possibility of more companies turning to offshoring to places like India, China, etc.

As the traditionally successful sourcing model comes under strain, IT firms will have to reinvent themselves and innovate to retain India’s position, as the preferred sourcing destination. Now India as an outsourcing hub has moved beyond merely the “cost” advantage and currently it is about the “value” provided to clients.

Thus, there's a need to focus on the value chain by cultivating deep and enduring innovation, not only in terms of a new technology or product; it's equally applicable to processes or services. We also need to constantly enhance efforts toward service quality and information security to stay ahead of competition.