Addressing a practical Offshoring challenge: Making your Engagement Manager work for you
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
