Matchmaking for Offshoring
The Quint Wellington Redwood Group is a global consultancy in IT management advancement, and plays a special role in mediating offshoring deals between European companies and Indian IT players. Hans van Herwaarden, CEO of the Amsterdam-based company was in India recently. We spoke with Hans and Sunil Mehta, Country Manager India, about Quint’s current drive to promote tier-2 Indian IT players among European clients.
 When did Quint start operations in India and set up an Indian office?
Hans: We were already delivering projects to Indian clients via our Kuala Lumpur office since 1999. However, at a certain point in time we decided we needed a direct presence in India. Sunil established the India office for us about four years ago and now we have a presence in four Indian cities—Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad.
What was the value proposition that India offered the company at that time? Was there a specific activity or service that you were looking at in India?
Hans: India is very strategic for us. We are a company of Dutch origin and were set up in the Netherlands in 1991. We operate in the domain of IT management advancement. We work with companies on how to optimise their IT operations, their IT strategy and bring improvements in these. In the last ten years, the outsourcing and offshoring services industry has grown worldwide and India has emerged as an important service provider.
What are your company’s activities in India at this time? How large are the Indian operations and client base?
Hans: In India, we work with three types of clients. First is the local customer—Indian companies operating within India. Then come the companies with regional reach—India companies with operations into other Asian countries. The third are the truly international global companies with worldwide operations.
Sunil: We have over 250 customers in India. This is our fifth year of direct operations in India.
We understand that matchmaking between Indian IT companies and their European/Dutch clients for outsourcing/offshoring is one of Quint’s major activities in India? What exactly does Quint do in this regard?
Hans: We follow a process of mediation where we sit together with the customer organisation to understand what part of IT management is feasible for outsourcing. Together we build an outsourcing strategy, looking at all aspects of IT management like application development, infrastructure management, networking, desktop management, etc and then helping the customer to decide which parts of the IT value chain can be outsourced.
Further, we help them in creating the RFI (request for information) and RFP (request for proposal) documents required to invite vendors on board and assist with the contracting as well. It is important to build in flexibility into the contracts so that our customers are well services and are assured the service levels promised. Last, we establish a good monitoring system and a reporting system and also put a communication process in place between the client and their outsourced vendor. Our USP is that we are a global consultancy and we offer no operational service. Quint is not a supplier.
Please explain what you mean by leverage-based methodology. Do Indian customers appreciate this?
Hans: Leverage-based methodology is our specialised model for global consulting. We capture 17 years of experience in IT management advancement in several countries across the world and utilise our leanings and best practices in our consulting services. These captured experiences and best practices are repackaged into our methodology such that we can deliver projects in half the cost and half the time as compared to the market standard. So what we deliver is like a turbo-charged version of a consulting service.
Sunil: Within India, there are examples where we have turned around projects in three weeks to three months where other companies had offered to do so in six months or more.
Hans: As you know, the Indian market is price-sensitive and very sensitive to efficiency as well. Our leverage-based consulting is very much accepted by Indian clients and markets as it brings down the total cost of ownership.
Do Indian companies look at setting up operations in Europe once their business with Europe grows beyond a point? Does this benefit the companies? How does your role change?
Hans: Over half the deals done on behalf of Dutch companies are mediated through Quint. We are therefore, the company to do outsourcing mediation. Deals that were done in 1995-96 followed a typical outsourcing model. After 10-15 years, Indian companies like Wipro, TCS, Infosys and others realised the importance of having a front end to service their European customers. In the past five years or so, most of the tier-1 Indian IT companies have established an international footprint and set up office in the Netherlands to service their European operations. The Netherlands was a very good choice for these companies because of English speaking people, attractive quality of life, tax advantages, etc.
There are more companies in India that offer the same quality of service and can offer great value to European clients. However, these tier-2 companies do not have a presence in Europe yet, either because they cannot afford to or have not seen the advantages in a direct presence yet. We, though, feel this is the right time for them to set up operations in Europe.
 Sunil: For a Euro 1 billion size company in Europe for example, it is very difficult to fit the right power equation with large multinationals like TCS or Wipro. There is more comfort in doing business with a smaller sized company. Many Indian tier-2 companies are catching up fast and offer cost and quality that are equally good as compared to the big players. We are raising awareness in the Dutch market about the quality offered by these smaller but high quality IT companies in India. We have organised delegations of Dutch companies to India in the past so they can see this for themselves. Recently, we brought in 22 healthcare organisations to India.
Hans: The challenge now is to offer tier-2 Indian IT companies a platform in the Netherlands to promote themselves, acquire clients and service their clients. We are in talks with Robert Schipper of NFIA India to facilitate an initiative that will help these companies establish a presence. We want to create an opportunity for them to capture some of the offshoring market from Europe via a Dutch presence.
One way of doing this would be through a joint initiative, some kind of umbrella organisation that is assisted by the Embassy and the NFIA in some way. We need to assess the interest levels among the tier-2 companies, pick perhaps the top 10-15 and talk to them about how interested they are in such an initiative. Based on their interest level, we could set up something in the Netherlands, of course after assessing the interest levels among customers in Europe as well. We have recently spoken with Sachin Pilot, Minister of State for Communications and Technology, Government of India about this as well.
What are Quint’s plans for India going forward?
Hans: India is one of the company's five strategic countries where we have decided to focus our work. India is therefore going to get a lot of attention from Quint’s top management as we seek to explore and expand our consulting activities as much as possible. India is a growing market and naturally, we would like to take our share of the pie.
Source: Connect |
