More for less

A hundred deals for 5 million dollars each or five deals worth 100 million dollars each. Come to think of it, though the former leaves you with impressive statistics to boast about what the company has been doing or targets being met, is it the same as brining greater value to a fewer number. And isn?t that what we used to learn in a certain generation in school - that you can do more for less, and that too very successfully.

The model is one that has definitely worked for us at HCL. Whether it is a full services co-sourcing model which was a first in the history of Indian IT in terms of magnitude or other large projects across multiple geographies, there has a been a huge mutual benefit for the customer and IT partner in working on a sustained basis across all facets of the IT set up.

Traditional wisdom might argue against placing so many eggs in a single basket, but I disagree. The two-way benefits that accrue, balance most risks - real or imagined. One of the major obvious benefits is, of course, the understanding that comes about. Rather than fulfilling on a single requirement of a client and attempting to integrate that with the rest of his system without actually delving into its intricacies, the IT partner gets a chance to work on every aspect of the company?s IT infrastructure, thus making for better integration. Proactive innovation and cost cutting follows on part of the IT partner, thus maximizing the customer benefit.

The IT partner, in turn derives a stable environment in which to function; can implement solutions with a view to the mid to long term requirements with the knowledge that it can be tweaked as and when required and has a secure contract, which means drastically decreased ?money worries?. This enables both parties to give their best and get maximum payback.

Another learning that both sides gain is handling projects of this magnitude. The future is bound to throw up more and more such large projects as the world increases its IT reliance and it is essential to build a knowledge bank on handling them, particularly if the Indian IT industry is looking at delivering high-value IT solutions and partnerships.

The demi-god, Hercules didn?t mess around doing lots of little stuff that the world would not remember. Why shouldn?t we do some of the big stuff too?