IBM setting up new strategy competency centre in India

In a move to inject stronger strategic and consultancy competencies into its sales roadmaps, IBM is setting up a dedicated competency centre for its IT Strategy & Change practice in India. IBM's Global Business Services division is looking at hiring consultants for its Strategy and Change Center of Competence (CoC) proposed to be set up either at Bangalore or Gurgaon, industry sources said.

The CoC will focus on sales and solutioning for transformational change in IT projects across IBM’s growth markets of China, ASEAN countries, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Central Europe, Middle East, Africa and Latin America.

The emphasis of the new CoC will be on IT performance management skills dealing with the areas of business strategy, IT strategy, human capital, IT governance, processes and project portfolio management. The new CoC will perform work predominantly out of client sites with a good amount of global mobility and CXO-level interactions involved for the CoC staff, sources said.

"A more structured approach to defining IT strategies and working out roadmaps will be adopted at the new CoC. IBM is looking at aligning business and IT strategy more closely where business impact assessment and application portfolio analysis will be important criteria to look at in a project. Mapping out SOA strategies and governance blueprints, defining and assessing enterprise architectures and developing RoI (Return on Investment) scenarios will also be important goals of the new centre," sources said.

Over 60 per cent of the work out of the new centre is expected to be done onsite. The CoC is likely to rope in consultants largely from outside India with over 10 years of experience in IT strategy engagements in the Asia-Pacific and African markets. IBM did not respond to a questionnaire seeking comments on the new strategy centre.

The Armonk, New York-headquartered IT giant is currently ramping up on the consultancy front in India by setting up a new Centre of Excellence for its banking and financial markets practice in Bangalore. This facility will be staffed predominantly by consultants recruited from the US, Canada, UK and mainland Europe, according to industry sources.

Since early this year, IBM has been moving to combat higher labour costs in the US by moving more jobs overseas. Big Blue is keen to move larger chunks of its operations to offshore sites to further reduce operational costs, according to analysts.

IBM India showed a 19 per cent increase in revenues to Rs 12,048 crore in fiscal 2009, according to a Dataquest survey.