Joel Martin — Executive Research Leader, Telecommunications, Media & High-Tech, HFS Research[00:22]
Hi, I’m Joel Martin with HFS. I’m the executive research leader of our telecommunications, media, and high-tech industry coverage. And today, I’m here to talk about our most recent study diving into the horizons around high-tech services. And today, I’m joined by Abhay Chaturvedi, who is the Executive Vice President, Tech Industries of HCLTech. I’ve invited Abhay here because, honestly, they are one of the market leaders in our study. We looked at three different horizons of delivery and capabilities and overall customer engagement. These included functional transformation at Horizon 1, where you have improved operational outcomes. These included Horizon 2 leaders, technology transformation, using technology to break down silos and improve business. And then Horizon 3, the market leaders, the space where they’re taking all the power of what they deliver from a technology transformation or functional transformation and deliver services across a business and across an ecosystem for their customers. So welcome, Abhay. Nice to have you here.
Abhay Chaturvedi — Executive Vice President, Tech Industries, HCLTech[01:09]
Thank you, Joel. Thank you. And first of all, thanks for recognizing our work in this space. We’re very proud of what we do, and of course it’s great to see market commentators like you recognize that, as we’ve discussed.
Joel Martin — Executive Research Leader, Telecommunications, Media & High-Tech, HFS Research[01:33]
One of the things that really impressed me about HCLTech was the passion of your customers. So tell me a little bit, why do HCLTech’s customers continue to get value from your services?
Abhay Chaturvedi — Executive Vice President, Tech Industries, HCLTech[01:33]
So, great question. Thank you for asking, Joel. See, we’ve had a long history within tech. So tech is the space where HCLTech was really born. And you know, we’ve been here for more than four decades. One of the most important things that I’ve realized, which clicks in the tech industry for our customers, is the fact that you get the worth, you get the intensity of tech and the culture of tech. Being here for so many years, being successful, we believe we get that. We get the speed of tech, we get the culture of tech, we get the mindset of tech, and so do all the people who are part of the larger team along with me who serve the tech industries. So that’s number one. Number two is that I think we have driven a lot of outcome-centricity. We are very clear on what’s our role within tech. We help our customers drive cutting-edge innovation, but we take care of a lot of other work that they have, which is what I call the engineering context, to help them propagate in their journeys, and we drive a lot of outcome-centricity in that scope for our clients.
Joel Martin — Executive Research Leader, Telecommunications, Media & High-Tech, HFS Research[02:53]
So you say, in your first sentence you talk about “we.” So, what is it about your people that really makes HCLTech successful?
Abhay Chaturvedi — Executive Vice President, Tech Industries, HCLTech[03:00]
I think, from an HCLTech standpoint, we’ve always sort of been very clear that people is the asset that we have, which serves this. And the other thing is that when you look at people and people’s motivation, what we realize is that, one, of course, are all the hygiene elements of salary, promotions and all of that. But what clicks more with them is to give them the satisfaction that they’ve created value, and value for the industry, not just us. And I think we have sort of enabled that. When I talk about outcome-centricity and the role that they perform for some of the tech giants of the world, they get a lot of satisfaction in the fact that they have been part of a journey, which is now a product which is launched in the market. And some of our clients have been kind enough to include them in that success. Their names are out there. Their names have been on patents. So we’ve driven a lot of that, and I think taking that ownership of driving an outcome for a project, a feature, a release is something which gives a lot of satisfaction. So I believe that our people have understood the culture. They are delivering that, and that’s creating value for HCLTech and its customers.
Joel Martin — Executive Research Leader, Telecommunications, Media & High-Tech, HFS Research[04:13]
So I wanna build on a couple of things you said previously — innovations, patents, people. How do you drive innovation? I mean, high-tech is known for being such an innovative and fast-paced market. How does HCLTech not only keep up with that with its customers, but also add to that?
Abhay Chaturvedi — Executive Vice President, Tech Industries, HCLTech[04:32]
Again, a great question, Joel. Two dimensions, the way we see innovation. There is what we call ecosystem innovation that we drive, which is, for want of a better word, top-down innovation. As an enterprise, we look at the market, along with the ecosystem of partners that we have, and see what’s coming out there. And then we invest in that early. We fail on many things, but we identify the two or three areas of success, and we help drive that for our customers. But equally or more important is the ground-up innovation that we drive with our people. As I said, a lot of our people are embedded into our customers’ engineering journeys, and these people essentially get ideas, and those ideas are something which have to be nurtured, which have to be grown, and that’s something we can do, and we again enable our ecosystem of partners to help them sort of take it forward. So ecosystem and ground-up innovation, those are two key dimensions of what has helped us drive the innovation for our clients and in the work that we do.
Joel Martin — Executive Research Leader, Telecommunications, Media & High-Tech, HFS Research[05:27]
Great, that’s awesome. Innovation is so important, but you brought up partners. I mean, high-tech is full of basically not only the buyer of the solution, but the need to incorporate technology from other folks. How does HCLTech bring an ecosystem of partners like you just mentioned into that equation and help navigate that with the needs of your clients, considering they may compete with some of those partners as well as need them to deliver their services?
Abhay Chaturvedi — Executive Vice President, Tech Industries, HCLTech[05:53]
Yeah, so Joel, about a year back, I wrote an article on this. So you know, remember the Japanese keiretsu, which is essentially there was this ecosystem of players who were customers of each other, who were suppliers, who were competitors. We live in that world today. We very clearly realize that we are back to the same keiretsu world. And that is where we need to learn to sort of create that dynamic, which is a 360-degree relationship, but also, at some point in time, competing with each other. And we’ve driven that well, number one, by focusing on some relationships. We can’t drive an ecosystem with everybody in the tech world. So we’ve been very focused on certain relationships which are very key to it here. And when we have identified that focus, then we have put effort in trying to make sure that we are very transparent. There are many-to-many relationships which are built, which are driving outcomes, and then there is a governance around it. So partners are extremely key to them, and frankly speaking, all the partners that HCLTech has today in the tech space are all my clients. So I am doubly interested in making sure that those relationships actually are delivering bidirectional value.
Joel Martin — Executive Research Leader, Telecommunications, Media & High-Tech, HFS Research[06:59]
Great. Well, thanks, Abhay. This is a great quick conversation. I love clarity on your vision of where you’re going, your experience of being there, continuing to build people and invest in people to not only come to work, but also bring ideas to work, not only to HCLTech, but to the customers they’re working with. Innovation and your view of innovation as a product leader yourself, as an engineering company, and as a services provider — those are things that stuck out to us, and really, we felt, solidify HCLTech as a market leader in the high-tech services market. And being able to bring in partners and have the intimate knowledge about how those solutions can be applied to solve your customers’ problems is exactly what we look at, and I was very proud to see HCLTech come out as a market leader in our HFS High-Tech Horizons for high-tech services. So, thank you. I appreciate it.
Abhay Chaturvedi — Executive Vice President, Tech Industries, HCLTech[07:56]
Thank you so much, Joel. Always a pleasure, and thanks again for recognizing our efforts in this space. Thank you.
