Is Indian IT Industry Heading for Suicide?
Even the best innovation of its time needs timely renovations, Indian IT industry is no exception. As much as half of Indian IT work force, if goes with some reports, could face axe in coming 2 to 5 years due to non-compatible skills of its mid-age staff that arguably put them into non-coachable zone. Has Indian IT industry long back headed for suicide by comfortably ignoring not to train its staff on emerging technologies and banked on traditional roles for its sustenance?
The defining trends within industry to Next-Gen outsourcing services of aggregators and remotely based innovation contributors though loomed long but not long enough to convince IT industry leaders to upgrade traditional roles of coders and service support staff.
For nearly three decades wealthy organizations mostly from western countries chose India as cheap outsourcing destination just because they could no longer justify high infrastructure cost and huge ongoing investment on human resource especially for their non-value adding products and services. India on the other hand grab the opportunity with both hands and didn’t mind being used as dumping ground as it created millions of jobs of and served perfectly as cost-effective destination.
The arrangement worked fine till it helped in maintaining high profit margins for the company and pleased shareholders with higher earnings per share.
But going ahead the scenario is looking bleak as competitiveness and profitability; the two major differentiators of outsourcing are fast losing edge to in-house innovations requiring very limited backend staff to support which instead of outsourcing can be handled locally onsite for better control. Outsourcing on the other hand didn’t remained as cost-effective any more as it was in last few decades due to higher percentage of mid to senior level management staff incurring high cost with huge experience which may not be required for the automation prone work that is being siphoned and that is disturbing the profitability of client and diminishing the probability of gaining more outsourcing work. Has IT industry failed to upgrade the skills of its senior staff that neither overseas clients wants to retain and nor Indian IT company wants to train?
The situation of experienced IT staffer is like now that of old parents who spend all their youth in earing and enriching family to become successful but now their own children are not ready to have them anymore. It is totally understandable for overseas clients not to train Indian IT staffs on latest technology as it defeats their purpose of cost-effectiveness but how can we explain the myopic view of Indian IT companies who didn’t bothered to timely sharpen its work force with newer technologies and worked totally in isolation without making any efforts to make their work force employable in changing scenarios.
The solution is simple but may not be easy; upgrade the skills set and train the trainable IT staff – young or experienced on cutting edge technologies to develop world’s best competencies – swiftly providing scalable solutions in a more customizable way to cater wider business needs. Be proactive to position products and services to wider industry needs with varying size, expenditure and expectations.
Create newer Green Ocean – be first to acknowledge changing expectation and be the best to embrace the change – generate newer competencies to regain cost effective value additions.
