Main advantages for IT in India
The IT industry growth has been the highest in the last few years. India has been serving the growing IT needs of almost all parts of the world. The US, EU, Middle East Asia, Far East Asia or Pacific regions, all have seen IT services given by India. India has been able to do the same due to various advantages that it has. The advantages that it has due to its geographical location or has grown and developed in the past. Now these advantages have been harnessed in terms of IT revolution.
The main advantages as we can all see and know are
1. Great technical know how
2. Large availability of talent pool
3. Cost advantage – low cost work force
4. Largely English speaking population
5. 12 hour advantage over US. When US sleeps India works
6. Political will and an willingness to open the economy
These factors paved a way to the development of necessary infrastructure and were also captured by the visionaries of India which ultimately led to the development of IT industry. Hence India’s face was plastered in the growing business demands for IT solutions.
But today, after 25 years of this exponential growth these advantages are fading away. A lot is being done in order to keep the USPs in place.
There has already been a scarcity of good technically sound people and the organizations are trying to groom the available talent. Simultaneously the country is also gearing up to produce more technical people by setting up better education facilities and training grounds.
English advantage is being challenged by other languages coming in for IT solutions and also the developing nations are getting proficient in English. Though India’s English speaking population is also increasing at a phenomenal rate.
The cost advantage is reducing as the cost of manpower is increasing due to high demand and less supply. This is becoming a major reason for the reduction in the profit margins of IT organization. The gross profit has not grown in the same proportion as the sales figures or the total income. See attached graph.
This scene is going to continue until some thing is done that brings back the USP of cost advantage.
What can be done? What was done in other industry?
In manufacturing Toyota led the way to move to Lean manufacturing and it can be said that days are not far away when we start following Lean servicing. Now who is going to be the pioneer in doing the same?
Lean manufacturing to Lean servicing
Lean manufacturing (from wikipedia.org) is a management philosophy focusing on reduction of the seven wastes
- Over-production
- Waiting time
- Transportation
- Processing
- Inventory
- Motion
- Scrap in manufactured products or any type of business.
Lean servicing
A management philosophy focusing on reducing various types of wasteful activities in a service industry
- Wrong designs (not understanding the user requirements completely and redoing the job)
- Reinventing the wheel (doing what has already been done by some one else in the organization for some other customer)
- Finding of right knowledge
- Reducing wastage of talent of human capital
- Time spent in coordinating activities
There will be more definitely. There are many methods and many models. But on the ground level how to do this is a thought to ponder
Knowledge Kinematics
This is what is needed. To be able to leverage the existing knowledge and to be able to build more knowledge and build capabilities is what is required. Take each one of the waste and you will find that Knowledge kinematics can be leveraged to actually have a unique way of reducing the wastes and thus a Lean Servicing
No comments:
Post a Comment