India’s economic development has spiked in recent years, as has its reputation for being a fertile ground for growth and innovation.
By Kevin Taylor
But to dive into the next stage and remain competitive, the country’s CIOs need to create, innovate and revolutionise the way they do things — especially when it comes to technology.
This year’s International Festival for Business in Liverpool brought together organisations from 125 countries to celebrate and encourage sustainable growth. Joining BT at the event was Horasis, the Global Visions Community who celebrate entrepreneurship and economic growth and in particular, India’s emerging markets. Collectively they looked at ways UK and Indian organisations can work and grow together. Ahead of the IFB, BT Global Services commissioned research on business attitudes to global expansion. It found that 88 per cent of Indian business decision makers felt that international expansion is essential for future success.
Technology helps to bridge the gap between regional and global organisations, and so far the Indian economy has really taken advantage of this opportunity. Statistics show that more than 2,200 Indian companies are expected to invest overseas in the next 15 years. This is down to Indian multinational corporations targeting new markets and taking risks that others are not able to take. Indian investment in the US has recently touched $11 billion and in 2012 India was the European Union’s eighth largest trading partner. What’s more, the UK attracted just under half (47 per cent) of India’s Greenfield investments in Europe and 63 per cent of new jobs.
Globalisation has had a profound impact in shaping the Indian IT industry, and India has captured a sizeable chunk of the global market for technology sourcing and business services. The industry was one of the first to globalise, and understand the challenges of cross-border M&A or organic expansion into new geographies.
New challenges
In the last few years the economic environment has been challenging, customer needs are becoming complex, competition is increasing, and technology trends like cloud, mobile, big data and social media are changing the rules of the game. Clearly given the combination of these forces, the Indian IT industry needs to innovate to not just drive the next stage of growth but perhaps also to stay competitive.
On top of this, India is one of the fastest growing countries in the world and has one of the largest populations of young people. More than 50 per cent of India’s current population is below the age of 25 and over 65 per cent is below the age of 35. The number of English speaking graduates and skilled engineers makes the country a powerhouse of talent. In addition, BT’s research has shown that foreign companies rank the IT skills of the local workforce as the second most attractive reason to invest in India (28 per cent of respondents), behind only the potential customer base (36 per cent). While on the one hand this is great opportunity, it also means Indian organisations will face a challenge familiar to many existing multinationals – the retention of talent and providing the right work environment.
Solutions through new technology
A solution to these challenges is to enhance collaboration through new communications technologies. Collaboration has been a cornerstone of the Indian IT industry, and it has been skillfully managing multiple members of the entire delivery ecosystem for many years. This can be seen in how the industry can mix on-shoring and off-shoring; work with multiple delivery partners across different geographies; and ensure delivery standards across different locations.
Better communications can improve collaboration by allowing employees to communicate in real time through a variety of mediums, including video, wherever they are located in the world. This requires a partner that can blend everything together seamlessly: disparate technologies, old and new platforms, across all different devices. Communication is clearly fundamental to business – globally 76 per cent of BT’s customers say ‘better communications make a big difference to business success’ and 77 per cent say ‘Unified Communications would make employees more productive.’1
More and more countries like India in the AMEA region are developing their communications to foster further growth and enhance international expansion. Expertise in connection, collaboration and communications can help them to expand quickly and sustainably with an understanding of the local market in terms of language, regulation and culture; help them deliver a consistent and reliable global service for their customers; offer increased agility and flexibility; and improve efficiency and reduce costs.
The future looks positive. The combination of powerful new devices and better connectivity is enabling people to be more efficient, improve decision making and give them more flexibility on how and where they work.
Kevin Taylor, President, Asia, Middle East, Africa, BT Global Services