Nasscom, Innovation and Why the Puck is Positioned Perfectly for the Nearshore

By Kirk Laughlin

As much as I would like to have been reporting from India’s  NASSCOM conference this week, an aggressive travel and guest speaking itinerary for the next few months, (including Sourcing Interests Group, Nearshore Nexus, IAOP Latin America, Shared Services Latin America and last but definitely not least – the Andean Call Center Congress) prevents it. Also, it would be hard to justify the 24-hour journey and time zone tumult. But no doubt we can all see from afar that the seminal global sourcing conference is pointing clearly this year to a couple of not-surprising trends:

1. Instead of “lift and shift”, the globalization world of IT and BPO services is calling on the next industry leaders to be driven by  the new mantra of “innovate and serve,” explained here by PA Consulting’s Alex Blues.
2. Instead of measuring and building value purely around SLAs and doing what’s ‘in the contract,” global sourcing firms who will define the next generation of services will be more fluent in reading business needs and anticipating business outcomes.
3. Finally, there is always a perpetual love of the term “innovation” at any tech-services related conference, but what is intriguing this year is a new understanding that innovation alone is not what clients want…of course. It is the ability to take those innovative products and processes and drive them home with accuracy so that they actually fit what the client wants.

When we look at the classic value equation on which the Nearshore community is generating its momentum – it’s all about creating closer “ties” to the client through better, more suitable communications. This is achieved both from time zone advantages but also the facility to culturally engage – a fact of nearshoring that we will continue to hammer home year after year. Quoting John Parkinson, global sourcing chief at Axis Capital from a special guest post on this topic last year:  While efficiency and productivity is important, it’s equally critical that your partners understand why you operate the way you do, so that they can be a more efficient version of you.

So to point back to the hockey allusion in the headline, if you’re an outsourcing services spender, are you anticipating the kind of business outcomes you will require from your services partner.  And, particularly  for the vendors, how much of your company’s roadmap is built toward generating value that transcends the typical wish list of the client. Very simply, are you moving to where the puck will be?

There appears to be a buoyancy emerging  from the NASSCOM conference, with many vendors in both IT and BPO reporting brisk pipelines – and this matches up with the kind of growth we’re observing in the Nearshore market. What we’ll be watching closely for over the next year is how the Tier One and Tier Two firms providing services out of Latin America are exploiting more tailored services – matched with likely the best project management teams servicing US clients anywhere in the world. That remains a potent combination in our industry.