Polaris to grab digital opportunity for future growth: CEO

IT firm Polaris Consulting & Services Ltd has said it is looking at grabbing the growing opportunity in the digital business space, especially in four areas including digital banking, payments, data and analytics, and risk and compliance.

The company is making investments in grooming digital ready talent and has been focusing on expanding its client base to Tier-2 clients, said the senior management.

Addressing the shareholders in the 22nd Annual General Meeting of the company, Jitin Goyal, CEO of Polaris said, "In a defining year in the history of Polaris, we have taken big bold steps that would help Polaris take its rightful place of Leadership in the Digital world. We were able to add 24 new clients and this has energised the organisation and validated our core digital strategy."

However, he said, the achievement of 24 client acquisitions in a difficult year has been shadowed by the erosion of business in a few accounts owing to both vendor consolidation initiatives as well as our own decision to exit non-strategic, non-profitable relationships. Adverse movements in FX also impacted our earnings in geographies such as Canada, Europe and Australia, he said.

The company has taken firm steps to bring in growth in future, including demerging the product business to sharpen leadership focus in the emerging landscape of opportunities, identify and invest in chosen growth engines namely Digital, Payments, Risk & Compliance, Data & Analytics, make the right set of investments in grooming digital-ready talent and rationalise its portfolio of client accounts and therefore focus management, sales efforts, and solutioning on those accounts that the company believe have the potential for high growth or significant cross-sell expansion. It also expanded Tier-2 clients, where, as a right-sized partner, it can be a better strategic fit and thus become their primary strategic partner, it said.

He said that the analysts are quoting a figure of over $50 billion spend on Digital transformation by the Banks this year alone. Gartner has forecast that by 2015, 25 per cent of businesses will employ a Chief Digital Officer. It has gone on to predict that 20 per cent of CIOs have already begun to take the role of a Chief Digital Officer. Thus, the digital wave would be the largest disruptor ( or should I say, opportunity ) in the financial spectrum.

Arun Jain, chairman and mentor of Polaris, in his address, said that the company has expanded its leadership team and more experienced members to the Board, which would help it in future growth. "Our expanded leadership team brings new skills and fresh perspectives to the organisation and will ensure that we are developing our operating strategies with best practices from across the globe," he said.