Managing Offshore IT

Last week, I had blogged about how my offshoring blog is doubling as a recruiting tool. Of course, not all recruiting has moved the Web 2.0 way. Though much of recruitment for offshoring firms happens at offshore base locations, sourcing firms, including my employer, are also hiring top-end technology consultants onsite; albeit selectively.  

I had an interesting time interacting with and interviewing fellow consultants and technologists the past couple of weeks. The consultants in question were referred to us by the head of their company’s consulting practice since the group was being disbanded due to some corporate restructuring; and the management of the firm had offered to connect them with other partner organizations (including Infosys). Why that group was being disbanded rather than being offered/sold as a consulting practice is something I had no intention of probing. So here I was, working with my colleagues to whet the profiles from that data set, and began making cold calls to talk with the prospective candidates. A few observations based on my interactions with the prospects:

• The group of consultants was geographically distributed across North America with a mix of consulting managers (program managers) and technologists.
• The projects they had worked on included a vast array ranging from pre-sales support for the firm, building business cases for/with clients to developing proof of concept and solution frameworks, roadmaps and other aspects that consultants typically get involved in.
  It was interesting to observe the career trajectory of these consultants who work with clients on very strategic initiatives and advice them on taking key decisions but were leading very tactical lives of their own: these road warriors were living off a suitcase, literally, traveling extensively to client locations.
• Like most true consultants worth their salt, they claimed that most of their engagements were ‘strategic.’ Of course, which consultant would admit to working on tactical initiatives? Or even if the engagement were tactical, on could give it a strategic twist: being billable was fulfilling their firm’s strategic revenue goals. :-)
• Though they had joined at different times in the past, many brought a wealth of industry and consulting expertise to the table. The consulting skills would certainly be valuable as they moved on.
• The fact was that my group was not the only one talking with them. in the spirit of open market, many had already been on the lookout for other opportunities

The processes of interviewing these professionals with years of industry background had an unintended consequence: it helped me reflect on my goals! And in case you are wondering how many in interviewed and eventually recommended for selection, tough luck finding that information here; this after all happens to be a corporate blog sponsored by my employer.

A few other intersting blog entries on the topic of hiring consultants:

• Do's and Don'ts for Hiring Managers
• What's the scariest thing about consulting?
• My two cents: offshoring firms onsite: Getting Hired in a Flat World

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 01:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The original Post from S:

Hi Mohan,
This is S from Bangalore and I need some advice from you. I am an Instrumentation Engineer and after completing my BE, I joined the Electronics Components marketing industry. I have been into promoting Electronic components and business development for the past 4 years and currently reached Assistant Manager post.

However a friend of mine forwarded my resume to Infosys and I have got an interview call from them for a Pre Sales profile. They said that it would involve heavy documentation work which worries me.

I read your writeup and need some advice from you: Do you think after 4 years of experience in Direct Sales --- is it worth migrating to Pre Sales profile?

Please advice as I have an interview scheduled for Saturday.
Warm regards
S

My two cents

Hi S
As I posted on this blog, my updated views on Pre-Sales are also online. Please review.

Though I am not familiar with details of your specific situation, it sounds to me like you are looking to further your career by joining Infosys, a blue chip software services firm (without a background in Software services)? Fact of the matter is that Infosys does not "promote" Electronic components but if they have offered to speak with you, you have an opportunity to explore synergies?!

Keep me posted on how it goes.
Regards
Mohan

Response from S:

Dear Mohan,
I had been to Infosys Bangalore today and attended the interview.
 
The interviewer is Pre Sales head for Network & Infrastructure division.
Initially he asked me some general questions about Sales and my current job profile. Then he asked me about pre sales and I told him what ever you had mentioned in your article. The interview also comprised of stress test, mock presentation, introduction, selling ideas etc. I was asked to be the "Infosys representative" and he was the "client" who required services. It was a 10 minute mock discussion and was OK

He was satisfied with my performance and I got the job. I am currently awaiting a formal offer letter.

Warm regards
S

Note to self: score one for my moonlingting as a corporate blogger?! 

But there again, before I get too upbeat, I have also had a few challenges, especially when it comes to onsite hiring. I have begun to pen down some thoughts in a working paper on hiring by offshoring firms onsite: Getting Hired in a Flat World

As always: comments welcome

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 01:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

My blog entries on Pre-Sales support activities in software service firms continue to generate comments (and offline queries), most recent of them being from Arvind Kumar Srivastava who agrees  “Pre sales is really an exciting and challenging role. It's a point where Technology meets Business; it involves exercising grey cells, coordination, communication, winning a client and opening the floodgates of wealth for the company u r working for. It also requires loads of patience and perseverance.”

Based on the stream of queries I received, I decided to elaborate on the topic further (published here online: “Viewpoints on Pre Sales, Sales support at Software Service Firms”). This is a working draft that I will continue to revise, so keep your queries and comments coming.

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The offshoring and outsourcing challenges for large IT initiatives are well documented in the media, and analysts periodically write papers and reports on “top reasons for sourcing failure.” [a sampling of blogs on the topic:Robinson and Iannone, Alan Inglis, George Mathew, James McGovern among others ] An entire segment of the management consulting sector thrives around deal consulting and sourcing advisory services [I highlighted some of the risks of offshoring in my book too].  The practical challenges of sourcing, however, appear as a footnote in discussions around ‘change management,’ and herein lies a challenge.

Case in point, I was at meeting of an engagement team and managers of one of our clients in the context of their team exploring the use of BEA’s Aqualogic as an integration platform. During the discussion, one of the executives made a mention that although we were a large service provider, with over hundred-thousand talented individuals who had expertise in myriad technologies, he was only exposed to the (Infosys) team assigned to their projects onsite and offshore, which was primarily in Microsoft .Net Application Development and Maintenance (ADM) space.

There is nothing radical here since this group of client executives, like many of their peers in the industry was looking for ways to leverage our organizational expertise beyond that of the current context. Although they were aware of the wide array of services provided by my employer, they had only seen our team work with them on one platform.

The challenge here was that the client’s technology leaders needed a better understanding of the dynamics of their service provider (us). I had blogged earlier about the crucial role that Engagement Managers (EM*) play in the success sourcing initiatives; the corollary here is to ensure that client’s technology stakeholders - VPs, IT Directors, Managers et al – understand their EM’s motivators in order to make him work for them.

In this illustration, the challenge is to ensure that the EM on the ground taps the right talent and pockets of expertise on Aqualogic. Fact of the matter is that in a large service firms like ours one is certain to find pockets of expertise, even on esoteric tools and technologies with a caveat: EMs may need to jump internal hoops to ensure they are available to the client at a point in time. The list of challenges in the same vein include: 

• Leveraging backend research. Large service firms, including Infosys, invest in research around several technology areas. How do you ensure that you, as a client have access to such research?
• Seeking specific inputs for complex problems. Such inputs may also be for areas where the service provider’s team is currently not engaged.

The challenge here cuts across service firms. Account Managers and EMs are incentivized to ensure successful client relationship (that translates to a steady revenue stream). However, in a scenario like the above, client’s management may need to demonstrate a longer term roadmap (for the Aqualogic initiative in this instance), in order to motivate the EM to jump through his (internal) hoops to identify someone with the skills and make them available at a short notice. If the EM perceives it to be a ‘one off’ request in the engagement context he may consider proposing re-skilling a few members from the existing team. Another incentive, though not very practical, may be to offer one-off pricing/billing rate for such one-off requests.

* footnote: though I use the term EM, it is used in a generic context to refer to key client facing people from your service firm that could include the Engagement Manager, Account Manager or even the onsite Project Manager

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 01:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Leveraging Open Source tools, framework and even code by developers in large (read traditional) IT shops is becoming increasingly prevalent. Which means, offshore teams that work with such IT shops are increasingly utilizing the ‘power of many’ and contributing back. I had briefly blogged on the convergence of Offshoring and Open source a while ago but hadn’t touched on a practical dimension that I came across recently.

Most IT teams that leverage open source tools, frameworks and solutions expect their team members to actively participate in the forums, and in case of teams that include service providers, say Infosys, expect them to also leverage and contribute to the open source community.

A member of my team was googling for some information when he came across a conversation in an online forum initiated by one of our employees posted using his id XYZ@infosys.com  Now, there is nothing wrong in using your real moniker to post your viewpoints or seek information on the web (though the flip side is that spammers trawling the web are going to add your mail-id to their list). However, such participation in open forums, say contributing to a discussion in the spirit of Open Source poses a unique challenge: Queries to open source forums need context, and in some case code references to be posted.

A query seeking inputs from others in the open source may need context of what one was trying to do (when the problem occurred). In some cases, the posting may require addition of the exception stack trace, error codes etc. that would help the reader to understand the problem and context. Though best practices around these scenarios for participating in Open Source forums continue to emerge, here are a few rule-of-thumb that my teams are using:

• Teams need to be sensitized on their responsibilities while participating in open source forums.
• Do not post any customer specific information (data, or proprietary code)
• Code snippets when required to be posted can, and should be masked
• When in doubt, seek inputs from legal teams of your employer and that of the client.

Note that these are merely stopgap inputs to protect client information with their consent. Our teams are increasingly taking a top-down approach by revisiting the Master Service Agreement (MSA) and chalking out of code of conduct for specific engagements and projects. And this is certainly not the last word on the topic....

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 02:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

It doesn’t require an industry analyst to tell us that there are multiple trends shaping up in the business-technology landscape; and some of these don't seem to have much correlation to others. If one pays any attention to business or technology media, one would get a feeling that everything seems to be correlated to the downturn or slowdown. let’s take the following examples:

• Executives at some firms, reading the tea-leaves about the impending slowdown are digging their heels deeper and taking a closer look at their spending, expenses and sometimes key initiatives that could be making them competitive. 
• Some Business Integration initiatives that were started with much fanfare last year are getting a second look before they can be rolled out. This includes key SOA initiatives, which I had blogged about a while ago
• Offshoring will continue to remain on corporate radar screens as a means to derive efficiencies by leveraging global talent

Though there may not be a direct correlation between the three trends, one can connect the dots.

The first 'trend' is more of a common knee-jerk reaction to macroeconomic trends in the landscape but goes against advice from management experts. Case in point, Ram Charan, the management guru, in his recent Fortune magazine writeup advices “Don't expect the good times to roll for quite some time... But smart executives can use the downturn to make their companies better, stronger, and faster” [Managing your business in a downturn]

Among his key advices to corporate executives: Keep building.  Ram Charan says “When the top line looks shaky and the bottom line worse, the temptation is to go after discretionary spending. Fine - but do not consider product development, innovation, and brand building optional. Sacrificing your future for a slightly more comfortable present is not worth it. If you keep building, you can come back strong.”

Most technology leaders will intuitively equate the advice to “keep building” to apply to their SOA initiatives, that adopt modular solutions with smaller investments, with faster time to market. While technology leaders recognize the need to “keep building,” they may also be getting the message to lower operational costs and in some cases be already leveraging offshored IT services. Given this scenario, it shouldn’t be hard to build a business case to continue with key integration and SOA initiatives.

Before you pick holes through my line of thinking, I am not advocating that executives pick up slack on SOA and integration initiatives during a downturn without due diligence.  This being a blog entry, it is hard for me to pick on more specifics on building a business case. In case you are looking for specific steps involved in strengthening your business case which may require an analysis of your scenario and specific drivers, you could ping me offline.

Posted by Mohan Babu K. at 05:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)