Outsourcing: Ankur Prakash, Vice President And COO, TCS Latin America (Part 4)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Aditya Modi

Sramana Mitra: In terms of dynamics of geography, in India, for example, we see that the big cities where the outsourcing industry really got started and matured such, as Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai, New Delhi, Gurgaon, and Noida, have become very expensive, and companies like yours are actually moving out to second- and third-tier cities. What is the parallel scenario in Latin America? Are we still in the major capitals like the Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Rio, and Santiago, or is it a more distributed model? >>>

Outsourcing: Ankur Prakash, Vice President And COO, TCS Latin America (Part 3)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Aditya Modi

Sramana: And how big a factor is language in your work in Latin America?

Ankur: For global customers, all the people whom we recruit are bilingual, so more than 90% of the people are bilingual. We ensure that all these employees are continuously in touch with the English language. We keep employees who are not working for global customers trained in the English language conducting classes. We have full-time teachers in foreign countries which help employees with language skills. This is so that whenever there is a need to transfer one employee from one client to another client working for a different project, they will not find any particular language a barrier. We ensure that the training is done; that they are kept abreast of necessary skills that are needed for working in English. And of course, the locals speak Spanish or Portuguese without any problem. >>>

Outsourcing: Ankur Prakash, Vice President And COO, TCS Latin America (Part 2)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Aditya Modi

Sramana Mitra: So, in terms of the evolution of outsourcing in Latin America, how do you manage the situation? How do you manage a region that is maturing late compared to India. The number of people with five or 10 years of experience is a lot fewer, right?

Ankur Prakash: That is correct, but there is also too much polarization of industries in Latin America. There are more than 3,000 IT companies across Latin America with fewer than 50 employees. So, you know, a lot of people have opened up these small companies that are serving the market in one way or the other. Whenever there is a chance for a professional to join a company like TCS, he or she is more than willing, is more than happy to do that. And it’s a fact that we are able to attract lots of talented people. We hire talented individuals and use them over a period in multiple projects, in multiple domains, in multiple industries, and in multiple technologies. There is no hire-and-fire policy; what we offer attracts enough talent for what we need. >>>

Outsourcing: Ankur Prakash, Vice President And COO, TCS Latin America (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Aditya Modi

About Ankur Prakash
Ankur Prakash has worked for TCS for more than 16 years and specializes in strategy formulation and execution, IT services, BPO, and consulting. He attended the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, and Harvard Business School.

About Tata Consultancy Services in Latin America
TCS Mexico began operations in Mexico City in 2003 and provides specialized IT services, consulting, testing, software development, business processes outsourcing (BPO), contact center, IT infrastructure solutions, industrial and engineering services and solutions. It now has headquarters Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. Major clients include Aeromexico, IMSS, Bank of America, GE, JCI, Ceridian, Verizon, Banco Santander, BAC Credomatic, Inter-American Development Bank, Banamex, and América Móvil.

Sramana Mitra: Hi, Ankur, welcome to the Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing series. I know you are based in Latin America, running TCS in this region. Would you please give us an overview about the business in outsourcing series context?

Ankur: Hi, Sramana. We implemented our Latin American strategy way back in 2002. Before that we were doing a lot of business within Latin American countries, but this was all either through India or through the U.S. After 2002 we established a local presence, and we are currently in eight countries covering more than 90% of the total GDP of Latin America. Through these local companies, we want to not only tap the local domestic and regional markets, also we want play  an important role in global strategy through our global network delivery model. We are the pioneers in this particular industry anyway. >>>

Outsourcing: César Gon, Founder And CEO, CI&T (Part 5)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Aditya Modi

Sramana Mitra: What are the strategies you use? How do you improve English-speaking skills?

César Gon: We have an official annual evaluation for each employee of the company. We have a lot of full-time English teachers inside the company, providing specific training for different people, and we have a lot of incentives for people to improve their English skills. We have done a lot during the hiring process to see if the candidate has good English skills. >>>

Outsourcing: César Gon, Founder And CEO, CI&T (Part 4)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Aditya Modi

Sramana Mitra: So, I understand the time zone issue. If you’re doing that kind of interactive customer relationship on every engagement, what is the technology infrastructure that is required? Does the technology collaboration infrastructure that you have put in place support that kind of customer interaction? >>>

Outsourcing: César Gon, Founder And CEO, CI&T (Part 3)

By Sramana Mitra and guest4 author Aditya Modi

Sramana Mitra: I understand. What I am asking is a slightly different question, you seem to have core competency in BI, and you have core competency in mobile application development. Now, one of the comments I have heard from a lot of CIOs is that the combination of those two, business intelligence and mobile applications on mobile devices, whether it is on iPhones, iPads, BlackBerries, or Android devices. This is key individual specific, personalized business intelligence that is specific to certain work flows and certain business drivers, this is an area that is not very prevalent yet It hasn’t been implemented very much at enterprises. Is it an observation that you are seeing in your businesses? Is that an observation that resonates with you?

César Gon: Yes, I think there is. It is not only BI with the mobile revolution, everything now should go from the desktop to the mobile. So, yes it just once case where it has happened. And of course, every time you go to a mobile device, the concept of user interaction is completely new and you need to pay a lot of attention to do this [right]. Even SAP users, the most conservative users in our sector are now required to engage with the SAP process to mobile device. So, it is really a trend. Another thing what we do different, is in the area of social media space. Social media is also a requirement today. If you go to the mobile space, you also need to go to the social media space, so it is very integrated in spite of its use to develop, to navigate the whole new thing. >>>

Outsourcing: César Gon, Founder And CEO, CI&T (Part 2)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Aditya Modi

Sramana Mitra: In terms of different engagements, César, I think core competency in iPhone apps or iPad apps is relatively a new core competency, but what is different about your expertise in BI? We have lots of Indian companies and Eastern European companies that do this; there are a lot of outsourcing providers that do BI, right?

César Gon: Yes, that is a good point. For example, we never get reports to produce. Whenever I set [up] a new software [program], I have to deliver 300 new reports. We strike a deal wherein we engage our customer. If they want to improve the sales of their organization, they need to understand better what they are going on in this, analyzing their sales data, you proved a way in the sales team and used that data and link that with business drivers and business goals and then we have a real opportunity to add value. And not producing more report that nobody is going to use and that is the kind of engagement we do using business intelligence. So, every BI project for CI&T starts with exploring what it is, what is the business value we intend from this opportunity, and there is a different set of methodology we use called lean value engineering, and a lot of core consulting skills. This is long before you start doing reports using any platform. >>>