The Hindu Business Line : Wipro bullish on process consulting

WIPRO Technologies Ltd is bullish on its business and process consulting practice and is eyeing acquisitions in this space as part of the "String of pearls acquisition strategy".

The Chief Marketing Officer and Vice-President, Strategic Marketing, Wipro Technologies, Ms Sangita Singh, based in Mountain View, California, said as large global clients begin to consolidate operations across locations, they look to a service provider like Wipro to meet their entire technology requirements. Consequently, the company's consulting practice, which accounts for about 4 per cent of revenues, is set to expand.

"Our acquisitions have been extremely strategic starting with Spectramind, Ericsson R&D, AMS in energy and utilities segment and Nervewire. We continue to scout for strategic acquisitions that add up to the domain expertise and bring in the local exposure on board Wipro," she explained.

Global sourcing has emerged as a big business where every CXO is looking to companies with offshoring base and deciding large deals depending on how much of it can actually be handled in countries like India. The backlash on outsourcing has almost subsided. No other sector in the world has grown at the level of say about 40-50 as witnessed by large Indian technology services providers — Wipro, Infosys, TCS and Satyam, she said.

While companies continue to hedge risks on the issue of dollar fluctuation, the areas of traditional business outsourcing and lately infrastructure outsourcing have gone up significantly. The issue here bogs down to the ability of large services providers to offer process consulting along with business solutions. This calls for deep insight and domain expertise. "It is here we continue to look for strategic acquisitions as a part of our string of pearls acquisition strategy," Ms Singh said.

"One has to distinguish the area of consulting between business consulting and process consulting. Business consulting is inorganic wherein skill application is also through acquisition of newer skill sets. On the other hand, process consulting brings in deep insights into a domain expertise. In our quest to expand the process consulting pie, we are in direct competition with top three-four consulting firms along with the other layer of service providers like IBM," she said.

"Given the value proposition a company like Wipro brings, this perfectly fits large trans-national corporations handle their tasks across multiple dispersed locations. Wipro is engaged with 27 of the Furtune 100 companies and 90 per cent of the work involves working across multiple service lines demanding exacting standards," she explained.

Citing the case of Olympus on one side of the spectrum or for that matter a large MNC oil company requiring logistics support, she said these couldn't be handled without bringing in expanded consulting role. "This is where we expect to consolidate our strengths and acquire some companies to broaden the scope of business and revenues."

"Wipro is also amongst the largest research and development (R&D) services providers engaging about 8,000 people across domains and working in areas such as System on Chip (SoC) design, VLSI (Very Large System Integration), covering design of chips. We work with 6 of the top 10 mobile corporations providing R&D services," she said.

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Wipro bullish on process consulting