Following on from my last blog, where I proposed the following scenarios to occur in the next three years in the Australia and New Zealand Market, driven by the base requirements of Cost, Flexibility and Speed to Deploy:
Calendar year 2015 and running into 2016: Traditional style RFPs from all industry sectors for IT Outsourcing services, both Apps and Infra. At the same time we are likely to see an increase in the XaaS apps requests, but still in the niche areas.
Calendar Year 2016 & 2017: Requests for full platform changes and applications modernization, with customizations done away with where ever possible will become more common.
Calendar Year 2018 onwards: The first real shift away from the traditional RFP driven outsourcing – to true XaaS… enabled by the apps modernization work and de-customization that we will have undertaken in the previous year or two.
We concluded there are some fantastic opportunities for HCLTech, but we need to mobilize now. Our selling approach will need to shift a little. Though out 2014, we concentrated on building relationships and responding to RFPs. We also worked at resolving a couple of niggling delivery issues. This was exactly the right thing for us to be doing at the time - and we’ve had success, with some significant new business wins (NN) along with some new work in existing customers (EN).
So with this solid year behind us and a fantastic base business that continues to grow in strength and diversity, it’s time for us to become more pro-active sellers, as oppose to re-active RFP responders. We need to create an identity of being an innovator, which will quickly set us apart in the conservatism of the IT services industry in the ANZ market. Part of this will be for us to pro-actively propose solutions that our customers may not even be thinking about. Proposing ‘what if’ scenarios that are directly targeted at improving their key business metrics (not their IT metrics)… cost to income ratio, cost per ton, cost per barrel, cost per litre of milk solid, etc.
We will need to push our customers a bit, as what we will be proposing will shift them from their comfort zones and some of our prospective customers, especially in the mining industry, have been very slow to exploit digital technologies, except in the back office areas. We are not likely to be successful in the first round of attempts, but it will create important conversations, and position HCLTech as an innovative thinker.
