Indian IT companies need to shore up their sales teams as the number of clients showing interest in off-shoring businesses is increasing, a senior executive of a global research firm said.
"We are seeing an increase in the number of enquiries from clients saying that they are ready to off-shore, but there is a concern about the current sales model of Indian companies," Gartner India's Vice-President and Regional Research Director Partha Iyengar told reporters here.
Gartner is an IT research and advisory company with operations in 80 countries.
Companies from various sectors such as manufacturing and healthcare have shown an interest in off shoring to India, Iyengar said, adding, these are still larger and a couple of medium-sized companies, but all of them are mainly in the Fortune 2000-plus space.
About 20-30 per cent of these companies are first-timers to off-shoring, he said.
"But there is a concern about the current sales model of Indian companies which have essentially been order-takers in the last four years. In the last four years, demand was not a problem for them but managing the supply-side was," he added.
Domestic companies need to restructure their sales teams to meet the demand in the current scenario, he said.
Firms need to revamp their sales force and go out more aggressively and deliver cost-saving measures to companies. They need to go out with more pro-active messages of value-delivery and increase cost-saving focus, Iyengar said.
At present, only two companies in the country have expanded their sales force to 30 per cent, he said, without naming them.
The companies should pitch in the value-proposition and delivery that they can give to the clients, Iyengar said.
Commenting on US President Barack Obama's statement about no tax holidays to companies that outsource their business, Iyengar said the move would not be a major cause of concern.
"I think it is more of a positioning and populist kind of a statement in terms of any strong real impact on the Indian off-shoring industry. I don't think there is going to be a strong backlash of any kind," Iyengar said, adding in this economic climate, no one is going to do something that would hurt US companies from an economic perspective.
However, there may be a ripple effect as companies would try to make sense of what it means from the financial perspective, he said.
Companies do not off shore their business simply to avail tax benefits. They are going to evaluate the benefits of what is the cost of skill-availability, flexibility and all productive areas that they get on one hand and any impact of the tax-break being removed on the other hand, and then make a decision, Iyengar said.
The financial impact is not going to be so extensive, he said.
Equating the current economic conditions with Y2K, Iyengar said that the climate offered Indian providers an opportunity to expand volume and move their value-chain in a more accelerated manner.
