Strategy Skills

As the use of global services becomes a core part of corporate strategy, senior executives are more likely to head the outsourcing/offshoring effort, particularly when business-process optimization is a key goal. Seniority is important from a change-management perspective. This type of responsibility is rapidly maturing into the role and responsibility for creating the overall-services strategy, ensuring quality, risk mitigation and cost arbitrage. These global-sourcing executives bring to the table the valuable combination of domain skills, generic business skills, outsourcing experience and knowledge of offshore locations (see Exhibit 1).

Who is this new style manager? “The senior person is an executive sponsor whose role is to create a cohesive offshoring strategy and to evangelize,” says Anand Arkalgud, VP, Global Business Development, Aditi, a Global Services 100 company that does software product development, based in Bangalore, India.

CEOs look within their organizations for such leadership and seldom search outside. They have the confidence that their own people will have the best understanding of their business and domain. Some of these people would also have been involved in previous IT-outsourcing efforts of the company, and hence would be from a technology background.

Says Nitin Aggarwal, Senior Consultant and Head-Technology Practices, Hay Group, India, “Such a person is typically from within the organization, who has worked to assess the potential of outsourcing and offshoring or set up a captive. He could also be someone from the service-provider side who has switched sides to the user organization.” Adds Anupam Prakash, Asia Pacific Leader-Global Sourcing and Business Transformation, Hewitt Associates, “The person is a star performer from within the organization. Usually companies ask the IT staff to do the offshoring work because of their prior IT-outsourcing experience. Also, since the job requires travel to India, quite often this person is an Indian based in the U.S.A.”

Ashwin Adarkar Win-Win Skills Understanding of global sourcing from the twin perspectives of a consultant and customer, in-depth knowledge of financial services, understanding of the business environment in the U.S.A. and India.
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Partner, McKinsey — headed business process offshoring and outsourcing and financial-institutions’ practices. Based in Mumbai, India; Los Angeles, Calif.	EVP, CEO-Consumer Banking and Global Resources, IndyMac Bank. Based in San Fransisco, Calif.

Neeraj Bhargava Win-Win Skills Knowledge of global sourcing from experience in outsourcing roles in a consulting firm, private-equity firm, and now in a service-provider company.
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Partner, McKinsey, and entrepreneur-in-residence for WNS Global Services at Warburg Pincus. Based in Mumbai, India.	CEO, WNS, India’s leading BPO company. Based in Mumbai, India.

Venkatesh Roddam Win-Win Skills Experience of moving banking processes offshore, domain knowledge of and proprietary relationships in the financial-services’ world, understanding of business environment in India, experience of service-provider setup.
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Global Head–Securities and Custody and Global Head–Corporate Trust and Agency Services, Deutsche Bank. Based in Frankfurt, Germany.	Head of Nipuna, BPO arm of Satyam — India’s $1 billion IT company, based in Hyderabad, India.

Onshore vs. Offshore Presence

While it’s common to find operations’ people working from offshore locations, it is only recently that senior outsourcing managers are working from offshore. One such person is Rajan Anandan, Dell’s top outsourcing manager, who works out of India. For Fortune 500 companies, this requires managing a mix of shared-services units, captives, and third-party relationships across the world. Dell itself has delivery centers in India, Eastern Europe, Argentina, Mexico and the Philippines.

In the case of IndyMac, its entire global-resources team sits in Pasadena, San Francisco, Calif., save for one person — the India offshore manager — who sits in India. The U.S. team comprises the BPO, ITO and Compliance teams, which work with the global-resources head to assess offshoring opportunities for the bank’s various business units. As an executive committee member, the overall responsibility for global outsourcing rests with Adarkar. Says Adarkar, “Our main job is working with the bank’s business units, which are in the U.S.A.” He adds, “It is important to have a strong onshore team to support an effective offshore program.”

Offshore experience is a plus for companies with global operations or offshoring experience, but what is in it for the manager himself? “On the plus side, an executive will get a hands-on flavor on what field operations are like,” says Alan C.L. Choi, Regional Managing Director, Greater China, Korn/Ferry International, an executive search firm. “The downside is the perpetual curse of the out-of-sight, out-of-mind syndrome. Working offshore, by definition, will mean that the executive will be away from the inner sanctum.”