Speedy “Good” Solutions are Often Better than
Delayed “Best” Solutions

MG Raghuraman, CIO, Mphasis advises young IT professionals to not be paralyzed by the analysis of solutions. Find a ‘great-to-start-with’ solution and secure quick gains, and then build or modify as required.

A mechanical engineer who started his career with the Indian Railways back in 1979, MG Raghuraman today is CIO of Mphasis, a position he has held for the last four years. He holds an MS in Software Systems. With over 20 years of experience in IT, Raghuraman is a veteran who has seen the IT service industry evolve over the decades at close quarters.

“In my opinion, a lot of good changes have been happening continuously to the IT industry in India. Working with international clients introduced us to different work cultures. And this automatically brought in structures and processes into the Indian workplace. The very nature of IT delivery mandated strong accountability, time management, and intense customer focus. Indians are traditionally not inclined to process orientation, and we love to have freedom in doing things our own way. Offshore delivery particularly demands total process orientation to win the credibility and trust of our international clients. Naturally, global delivery brought discipline and ownership into managing projects,” says Raghuraman.

The Indian IT services industry, reminisces Raghuraman, started with sending people abroad to handle IT projects. Then, slowly transitioned to offshore delivery of low-end work for cost arbitrage and evolved into delivery of managed services from offshore. Today, it is more about the offshore team owning the results and outcomes, and not merely the tasks. And the current trend strongly points to delivering  end-to-end managed services. “Clients demand a business solution, they don’t want to be bothered about the underlying ITdetails,” he says. Gone are the days, when clients demand delivery of solution on a specific technology.

Cloud’s Changing the Way IT Works

Cloud is bringing in a paradigm shift in the way we approach IT, says Raghuraman. “Focus on having your own IT architecture is now fading away. Since transitioning existing legacy enterprise applications and ERPs to cloud does not prove cost effective, Mphasis adds new incremental features, functionalities and new business services, deploying cloud based solutions. This is the best way of optimising our sunken infrastructure costs, while at the same time getting new speedy business solutions.”

He explains this with an example. “Three years ago, if we wanted a new solution, we would look at developing it in-house, invest in IT hardware, design and manage info-security, and implement solutions. But recently, when we wanted to implement a quick Sales CRM solution, we procured a sales tool, on-demand, on a pay-per-use model. It was up and running, after integrating with our existing ERP applications, within 60 days. A speedy go-live for business, with no Capex costs. This would have been unthinkable three years ago,” he says. And he doesn’t have to bother about backups, archiving, security, upgrades, and patches. “Of course we also built in a lot of protection in the SLA with the service provider,” he adds.

We are quickly moving into an era where the business or end user who chooses the IT solution available in the market that is speedy and that fits to majority of his/her needs,and not the one with the IT expertise. Just as the young consumers are deciding their own tablets, smartphones, the apps and plugins, Raghuraman says, the enterprise users expect and want to have a control of the solutions they select and implement for their business. The business side of the organization is beginning to have lot more say in the IT decision making. “So the biggest change I have seen is that the IT team has to realign their focus on understanding the business rather than being only technology focussed. And at Mphasis, this is what we are preparing our CIO teams to do—to focus always on the business point of view.”

“This change is not easy. Yes, it is a bit of a struggle. We have people who are hardcore IT professionals, who are very good at solving technical problems provided they are well stated. But the current reality is that getting well defined requirements is never going to easy. The business world is moving so fast, that it becomes unfair to expect a complete set of requirements at the start, for building IT solutions. Requirements will probably continue to be hazy and evolving, but the business will state the business outcomes and the business problem it wants to solve. And it’s the IT team’s job to find speedy, easy to use, optimal-fit solutions. Speed is the keyword here,” he says.

“We encourage our team members and team leaders to spend a lot of time understanding the business. They should be able to ask clarifying questions to get to the root of the business problem they are solving. And IT teams have to own the business outcomes and not just get a technical solution implemented,” says Raghuraman.

New Metrics to Measure IT Performance

The IT infrastructure has to serve the business goals. The IT team’s performance is now hard linked to the business growth of a company. “I am measured on a simple metric—Cost of technology over Revenue”. Any and all of IT investments have to align with growth in revenue and profitability. So as a company, we put our money into those projects that will bring us closer to our revenue and profitability goals,” says Raghuraman. Balancing the business aligned IT investments, with no compromise on keeping the lights on, are the expectations from a CIO, he adds.

All our targets and goals are measurable, says Raghuraman. He says, “At Mphasis, we are owners of the results and not tasks. I think excellent dashboards, reporting and analytic tools are vital to success. We can eliminate surprises, pick up early signals, predict failures and take quick corrective action. Our IT systems enable us to do so.”

Model-driven Architectures

Raghuraman speaks about new trends in the software services space. Model-driven architecture (MDA) is a key trend to watch for, he says. “Essentially, the layers of functionality are separated from the implementation part, irrespective of the platform. Internally, we have already developed two solutions and have recently implemented them. MDA will be the standard approach we will adopt to bring in agility and flexibility in software development,” he says.

Mobility is another enterprise game changer. “At Mphasis, we have a mobility strategy which plans for the applications that need to be brought on to mobile devices. We are currently working on enabling all manager approvals to happen over the phone,” he says.

Execution is Vital

We ask Raghuraman if he would like to share any insights for young IT professionals. “Yes, in the past, we have all experienced instances where we get paralyzed with excessive analysis of IT solutions in the quest for the “best” solution. It is a hard reality, that no solution can be a 100% fit to a business need. Find a ‘great-to-start-with’ solution, gain some quick wins, demonstrate success, and then modify or build it further—that is the way to go. Market and business requirements have an expiry date which is often not greater than 3-4 months. No one has the patience to wait longer,” he says.

“There is no shortage to ideation and strategies; it is execution which is more critical. Well-defined ownership for results and an institutionalized and tireless review mechanism are keys to project success,” he says.

Winding Down

How does Raghuraman unwind? “These days I spend an inordinate amount of time watching election news and debates on TV,” he laughs.

“I play bridge online with virtual partners. I strum my guitar and read books. I have a passion for gardening, so during my weekends, I spend quite some time with my potted plants!”