The global financial crisis may be leading to doomsday scenarios being painted, but the actual impact will be minimal says Sunil Mehta, country manager of Quint. Infrastructure outsourcing will in fact grow, he adds. In this conversation with Tabrez Khan, he elaborates on various trends in outsourcing and suggests ways CXOs can make better sourcing decisions.

Briefly, what’s Quint all about, globally and in India?

Quint is a global IT management consulting firm which specializes in IT-related organizational changes. We have a presence in 22 countries with Netherlands being our world wide head quarters. We provide consulting services globally in more than 35 countries.

Although we are a global company we truly believe in proximity and that is why we are consistently increasing our focus in India. We specialize in IT management, offering both thought leadership and practice leadership.

What according to you is the importance of sourcing for an organization and what is the future as seen in India?

For an organization to be effective, it has to ensure that its sourcing management approach is getting results. In order to achieve what is desired there are lot of challenges which need to be overcome and lots of cross checking which needs to be done with the right outsourcing vendor. Companies today are not only looking for bigger IT investment budgets but also optimization of the current investments. In a country like India sourcing plays a very important role as the business model and strategies of this profession enables the CIOs, CXOs of organizations to have a better control of their investments and plan their projects in a more effective manner.

With the commoditization of IT in India, outsourcing is rapidly becoming a common practice across many organizations. Today, it is difficult to keep pace with developments in the innovative IT areas and organizations wish to conduct successful partnership with a focused set of objectives. Sourcing helps attain a strategy that is aligned with the organization’s business strategy and objectives. This strategy includes measuring the organization’s culture, values and history, which form a unique backdrop against which outsourcing must be evaluated.

What is your perspective on the US financial meltdown and economic recession? How will it impact sourcing?

US companies are under tremendous pressure to reduce cost and increase revenue and therefore the impact on sourcing would be felt only to the extent of delayed decision making and shrinkage of IT budgets by companies predominately operating in the BFSI segment. The need to offshore and outsource will stem from the need to cut costs and rationalize resources. IT infrastructure outsourcing will grow as this helps organizations to become nimble and efficient by offshoring as these are non-discretionary spending on IT. In the immediate to short term there will be pricing pressures that the service providers will have to combat. But over all the sourcing business would not get largely affected as Indian IT Service companies get only 30 – 40% of their revenues from the BFSI Sector.

Can you please elaborate on some of the recent trends in sourcing?

IT service providers are focusing more on the domestic IT outsourcing opportunities and many of them are tapping the European market to diversify their risks. The need to reduce cost has become a strategic priority especially during the crisis scenario and therefore offshoring and outsourcing will continue to grow but not at the same pace that we may expect. Dependence on the US market would reduce. Remote infrastructure management outsourcing would form a substantial chunk of outsourcing deals. We would also see deals where there will be vendor consolidation. Organizations would prefer transformational outsourcing deals with the transaction based or out come based pricing models.

What is IAOP COP Masterclass? What’s the significance for Indian organization? Who are you targeting?

International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) is a US-based global standard setting organization and advocate for the outsourcing profession. The COP Master Class integrates Outsourcing Professional Body of Knowledge (OPBOK) as well as 49 outsourcing professional standards developed by the Outsourcing Standards Board. This 4-day course includes 10 modules as well as a Capstone case study. The COP Master Class will provide tools and techniques needed for successful outsourcing deployments.

We are targeting the information services and the technology team of various verticals especially, retail, banking, insurance and mutual funds. COP is an industry designation targeted at outsourcing professionals who are part of the strategic leadership team involved in strategic planning, designing, implementing and managing outsourcing business relationships. It includes CIOs, CFOs, COOs, IT heads and all decision-makers related to outsourcing/sourcing.

How do you plan to serve the Indian market?

The Indian market is untouched as far as sourcing is concern. As consultants and trainers we feel the need to spread the awareness of the sourcing model to different organizations and enable them to overcome their challenges. We intend to leverage our core competency from our global sourcing consulting practice and look forward to tap the Indian market and educate our customers of the complexities of sourcing models. Quint, with its global network and diverse collection of best practice, prepares professionals and assists organizations in the various stages and processes involved in making intelligent outsourcing decisions.

We have a set of trained consultants who prepare outsourcing professionals to face the diverse outcomes of their sourcing models and enable them to prepare efficient strategies. We aim to develop successful communications strategies which not only provide advisory services based on best practices, but also help organizations to improve their contracts. We would be focussing on Gurgaon, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Pune as these are major offshoring centers.