19 Staffers Put In Papers At A F Ferguson

Almost 19 people have quit accountancy and management consultancy firm A F Ferguson and Co (AFF) over the past few weeks. This includes a director and head of information technology (IT) _ P S Srinivasan. Replacing him is Shobha Sethuraman, a director at AFF's Bangalore office. The exodus comes at a time when AFF, India's largest homegrown firm, is facing stiff competition from multinational consultancy firms. The reason for people leaving, say insiders, is the change in the agency's IT strategy.

Earlier, AFF offered complete IT solution to clients. The recent change will see AFF focus on the high end of IT consultancy and not get into the full gamut of development and design of products it earlier offered. "It will be more like an advisory role," says a manager. As a result, most of the manpower in the department, especially designers, had become redundant.

 

Confirming the change, E A Kshirsagar, head of AFF's consultancy business, says, "At times, we have to relook at the way we do business. This is more in line with that." He, however, claims that the departure of a handful of the IT personnel is not likely to affect AFF in any way. "In our kind of business, people come and go," he adds.

Even so, AFF - which offers a gamut of services from business strategy and structure to systems - has for the past two years been focusing on industry and sector groups. These include automotives, financial services, FMCG, healthcare, petrochemicals, infrastructure, steel and chemicals. Established in 1893, AFF with offices in nearly all the major metros is the largest operation in this fast-growing service sector. Traditionally an accounting firm, the consultancy practice was set up in 1967. Today, consultancy accounts for 40 per cent of AFF's turnover. Of this, insiders say, IT contributes not less than 40 per cent.

For AFF, though, people leaving is not unusual. It was only three years ago when AFF snapped ties with its strategic alliance partner _ multinational consulting firm KPMG-Peat Marwick. With the growing opportunities in the Indian marketplace, KPMG's offer of picking up a controlling stake in AFF was turned down. The fallout of the incident saw some top AFF directors quit to join rival firms and in some cases set up their own outfits. Srinivasan is likely to concentrate on his ailing Shaan Interwell, a packaging firm, where he is chairman. Sethuraman who had earlier quit AFF to join IBM returned to the fold last year.