Increasing Revenue through Repeat Businesses with ICI's Clientele - Essay Example

?Question 2 A1. Their main strategy here is to increase revenue through repeat businesses with their clientele. They also offered their new with the option of entering into a relationship to define problems identify solutions and implement them. A2. The team at ICI decided to lead a new generation into the consulting business in order to become more competitive with big players like IBM and Accenture. They planned to extend Infosys’ Global Delivery Model to the consulting board and create a structure that was different from ICI and other consulting firms. This approach was considered a leader in IT delivery projects. They were broken down into different components and distributed to onsite, near shore and offshore sites, to deliver them at maximum value and the most cost efficient way. This cut their costs by 30%, because their time to market using the world wide teams made working 24 hours a day a reality. Infosys had a different approach to implementing their technology. Instead of analyzing the firm’s processes and redesigning them, ICI looked at the process requirements, not the functional requirements. They found that inefficiencies could be found better through horizontal processes rather than vertical functions, like sales and marketing. They also looked at process metrics. The idea was that everything ICI did needed to impact their client’s performance and thus increase shareholder values. ICI used the GDM to employ an onsite team that worked with the client to see how the company operated and was organized. Most companies had five to ten level processes used to develop a product from an idea into a reality. ICI was able to identify these, and organized their team accordingly. The onsite team used process experts and SAP experts. At night, the offshore teams turned the templates into a configuration. Then, the next day, the onsite team would test the configuration with the client and create a second iteration. That night, the offshore team would develop it. Typically there were four or five iterations for each process object. Under typical circumstances, each one would take a week. In the case of 200 process objects, the configuration for all of them would take approximately six months using ICI’s methods, whereas traditional methods could take up to a year. This also resulted in higher client satisfaction, because it could be tested during the design and configuration processes. ICI also created a 1-1-3 model for cost reduction. What this does is allows business consulting resources at the market rate, an onsite IT implementation resource at a lower than average rate, and three offshore developers at lower than market rates. What this did was allowed ICI to conduct major engagements for about $100 per hour, versus market rates having an average combined rate of $300 to $400. ICI followed Infosys in its philosophy of measure everything. InfoSys created a high awareness of quality of work using its Capability Maturity Model (CMM). This model judged the maturity of software processes currently in use and identified what was required to increase the maturity of them. ICI’s ideas from a broad service stance were assisting clients in dealing with their technology related issues in customer, product and corporate operations. ICI found that the best way to deliver value was to make marked improvements in the process metrics in the clients operation through its engagement with ICI. So, every transformation and consulting engagement resulted in a concerted effort on the part of ICI to deliver as much improvement in process metrics in the hope of creating a positive shareholder value. ICI would analyze their current operations, assess process metrics of each process and design changes in the structure that enabled the technology to deliver marked improvement in the process metrics. In the quote-to-cash process, they measured the time between the quote submission and time of payment. Their capacity fro processing those orders in a certain timeframe. What percentage of orders had zero errors and which shipped on time. They also kept track of numbers of quotes with readjusted pricing and the number of days’ sales that were still outstanding. Although InfoSys went to work as one company, it gave ICI its own autonomy to create culture, recruitment strategies, structures and compensation packages. ICI then decided that they needed to create their own culture to differentiate themselves from similar businesses. The first thing that they did was keep with an old philosophy of InfoSys’: hire first-rate people only. Along with this, they added a referral system to try to hire the top 10% of talent from other companies. ICI was also able to keep half of the employees from the original InfoSys, as they were more knowledgeable of the sales and delivery models and didn’t have business development or client relationships from anywhere else. To create the differentiated approach that ICI was wanting, they decided to create a structure based on meritocracy and transparency. Their staffing model was responsible for contributing to the firm, and thus given to individual employees. Their employees were able to input their skills into a database, wherein a manager could search, match results and decide which employees were available and had the relevant skill set. Employees could also volunteer for engagement, or opt out from certain ones if they chose. ICI bought an auctioning module so their employees could bid on projects in a reverse auction. They also implemented a Personal Margin Contribution, so the employees could see their margins of contribution or revenue allocation on every project. Another thing that ICI did for their staff was created staff nominations for promotion. this way, the senior employees who were being considered fro promotions could explain why they should receive the promotion, and the employees could nominate and score each one. They realized that by using the GDM, they created a 24 hour work cycle, but in order to keep their employees from burning out, they had each employee block certain times on the calendar when they would be unavailable. ICI also tended to compensate their employees on the higher end, with a bonus structure linked to the value ICI had for its clients and their values. After each project, based on varying percentages, the employees would receive lucrative bonuses on each project. As InfoSys grew and expanded, it became more important that the capabilities were in the same line as client service and marketplace advancement. This involved improving internal mechanisms so that clients saw InfoSys as one company, not a collection. They improved the training programs for employees, built on their collaborative skills and ensured they received cross business training. Overall, they tried to create an atmosphere where leaders could strategize, develop opportunities, resolve issues and make this company self-sustaining. They recognized that all the separate entities within the company needed to work together. Given its smaller than average size, ICI needed more attention to be successful. Ultimately, ICI was able to transform into the global brand that they wanted to be. Through the use of quarterly meetings to learn and evolve, both InfoSys and ICI were interacting on a positive and educational basis. By integrating its global perspectives and increasing the migration of management from different countries, ICI changed and grew into an exceptional company. Read More