How to survive and thrive in the highly competitive outsourcing industry
For the past decade, Indian outsourcing firms have talked about ‘moving up the value chain’ as a way of enhancing their service offerings, protecting their outsourcing dominance and increasing their opportunities for profitability. These long-term moves have important implications for client firms, since they imply a shift in how client firms and business leaders engage with these outsourcers. While Indian outsourcers have prepared for this shift, it seems that many business leaders on the client side have not. Readers will learn what to look for and copy from Indian outsourcers who have successfully enabled their business for high value-chain work, and how to prepare to leverage high-value outsourcing opportunities for their firms.
Infosys is not alone in focussing on service innovation. In April of 2010, MindTree, a mid-tier outsourcer aiming to launch a growth strategy to take its revenue base into the billions of dollars to compete with the top-tier players, launched a “5*50” initiative3. Intended to create intrapreneurship amongst employees, the idea is to cultivate employees’ creativity to start 5 new high-value business lines that could reach $50 million revenue in 5 years. Four months after launch, the first incubated business idea was launched – digital surveillance – a high-value solution aimed at security organizations and government services.
What can you learn from high value Indian outsourcers?
Reprint from Ivey Business Journal
[© Reprinted and used by permission of the Ivey Business School]