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The IT services business has become very competitive. Companies are vying and competing with each other for a share global dollar. Tata Consultancy Services, better known as TCS, has been in the IT Services business for almost 30 years, as long as MNC companies. After creating a name for itself in India and in Asia, TCS wants to be known globally. TCS Global Marketing Head Jayant Pendharkar speaks on how the company will gain name globally and is starting to compete with established IT services company.

SDA: TCS, along with Infosys and Wipro complete the troika of Indian Software companies and get mentioned as such in all media reports globally? Despite that you have launched a Global Marketing Campaign. Tell us more about this venture?

Jayant Pendharkar (JP) TCS is one of the best-known companies in the Tata group and the Tata group is well known across the world. The world took note of Tata group after the acquisition of Corus. If you look at the top brands in the world, most of them are American brands, a few European brands and rest Asian. For the last 30 years that we have been in the IT business, we have telling our customers that we will build a brand and now we are working on that. We have been pioneers in services business for the last 30 years. We have been very competitive and our services have been very good. Our customers have given us repeat business. Many times IT managers who selected us took us along when they moved on to other companies and it was mainly because of this that our business grew. If you look at the IT services business today, it has become very competitive. Many global companies such as IBM, Accenture and EDS have all come to India and are competing with us not only abroad but also in India. Again Indian IT services companies are not very well known globally when compared to their global peers. Looking at our growth rate and customer acquisition rate, we realised that we can be in the top tier group. So we started this process to stake our claim as the top IT services brand for Tata Consultancy.

SDA: What made TCS embark on a new marketing drive?

JP: When you have a very strong brand, it not just helps in getting new business, but also helps in getting into ‘boardroom discussions.’ It also helps you get a premium. Now look at a Lexus car and Toyota Camry. People are willing to pay a USD 15,000-20,000 premium for a Lexus car even though the engine in the Camry and Lexus are the same. Lexus is known for quality and refinement. So that is our belief. If you have a brand name and offer good services, people will pay a premium. The brand can be associated with reliability, quality and ability to deliver on time. So we thought it is the right time to distance and identify ourselves with the top 2-3 brands in the world in IT services. We have good name, we have customer backing and only thing needed is to cash in on that.

SDA: How did the idea to promote yourself came up. How are you moving ahead with this one?

JP: This was not a one-day job. We had it in mind for very long. So we sat with our American, European marketing chief and others in India. We also consulted a top global brand consultancy firm to make our brand more visible. We could do that with excellent outdoor advertising media, online media, good brochure and other collateral. It is not that the world will believe in what we boast. It has to be supported by sufficient facts and figures and so we decided to tell our story to the world. Our customers know us but to the rest of the world, we decided to tell them our story through our customer experiences rather than telling it ourselves. That was the first thing we did. Secondly we believe that our employees are our brand ambassadors. So they should also know more about our company. Lot of our employees work outside, onshore and at customer’s premises and if they know more about us, there is nothing better than that.

The bigger task is to remember that we operate in 40 countries, we have employees of different nationalities and they should all know about TCS’ philosophy. So when they operate and work outside, they get to know our customers better and in turn the customers know us better, hence it is necessary for our employees to know the company better.

SDA: What are the benefits that TCS will gain from this?

JP: I can’t comment on the benefits at this moment but yes, whoever has participated in our campaign whether our customers or our employees have expressed satisfaction and when our demands are met (of brand visibility), naturally our expectations will go high. There are various parameters with which certain experience can be gauged and these will be of help in promoting our brand. So while we were developing our campaign materials, our marketing team was discussing how the experience could be made full use of projects that have been done. We have done more than 2500 projects and we have been tracking all of these over ten years. We are CMM Level 5 company, so we have all the data and are analysing how they can be used. Our performance is much higher then the industry standard which we get from industry publication and use that to justify our position in the market. We have a select team of senior executives who will value the experience of the over 2500 projects and they will give us their report. Our management stands by this and this is our mantra and this is how we want to be measured.

SDA: Branding and marketing have been dominated by US and Japanese organisations with Indian companies lagging behind. What has changed now? What brings about this change in the industry?

JP: As you know, the Indian IT industry has made a very large impact overseas, probably even larger than the numbers justified, but nevertheless, if any brand has been created overseas, it is because of the quality and competitive work. So we expect that with this realisation, we should capitalise on this and build a brand. It also has a negative connotation in the sense outsourcing has always been emotional and during election time, politicians raise the issue and keep jittering. By building a brand, customers will get more value for money and this holds good for all other Indian IT companies.

SDA: Infosys has a product called Finnacle and iFlex has Flexcube. Does TCS plan to get into the product space?

JP: TCS has had products since beginning but we have been strong, particularly in the services space. We are strong in the financial space such as stock exchanges, banks, and insurance space plus we have also some acquisition in Australia and Switzerland. We have also made internal communication to set up a business unit for the financial services segment. We are working on that and some of the banking products that are out there are are absed on TCS solution and some of the stock exchanges are using technology based on TCS IPR. Some of the leading insurance companies are using our products and hence we thought the time is right for us to set up a product space.

SDA: Talk about your mergers and acquisitions?

JP: We haven’t really decided about mergers and acquisitions. We have a specialised team that looks into M&A and if there is a niche company that we think adds value, we will certainly acquire that. Yes we are looking at this space seriously.

SDA: Infosys and Wipro have BPO units. How about you? You haven’t been really very aggressive in the BPO segment? What are your plans in the BPO industry?

JP: We have been in the BPO space since our inception. Those days it was not called as BPO, but as Bureau Software. Two years ago, we set up unit and it is focussing on BPO. But I think we are the only Indian company that has the largest BPO team for the third party.