Investing in right capabilities and have a differentiated offering is crucial for Wipro: Thierry Delaporte, CEO at Wipro

Thierry Delaporte has set high targets to help Wipro return to industry leading growth. In an interview with ET’s Ayan Pramanik and Raghu Krishnan, the Wipro CEO said his five-point strategy and focus on clients is aimed at taking the IT services provider back to (the top of) “the Premier or Champions League.” Edited Excerpts.You have talked about a five-point strategy to drive growth. How do you plan to take this forward? If you look at the five priorities -- obsession for growth; focusing and scaling based on our strengths, and creating more differentiation, (these) are aspects that clearly focus on the market. If you look at talent, it is also about connecting with the market. It is about having the right talent in the right roles, growing, developing and getting the best talent from the industry. And, finally, driving efficiency on our internal operating model and simplification of processes. Only one thing matters: our clients. I want to make strategic alignments with partners and make bold commitments with them.Does it require a complete cultural change within Wipro?We have wonderful aspects of the culture of Wipro and I want to build on it. There is not one single organisation that has such strong values. I have connected with more than 100 clients and they have all repeatedly said it is fantastic to work with Wipro; high sense of commitment; great integrity; people are here to serve. We are a company driven by a sense of purpose. There are areas where we need to drive change, but it is not specific to Wipro, every company in the industry needs to constantly challenge itself. Not changing takes us away from the market. A few years ago, we were connecting with the IT side of the organisations, and more and more, we are connecting with the business as well; it does not mean that the IT department is less relevant, it means technology is broadly invading the organisations. Will that mean you need to be more consulting oriented?I will certainly focus on having more capabilities, more talent that help our clients develop their transformational journey. So, consulting advisory, digital transformation architects; these types of profiles are essential when you want to really have a very strategic discussion with the client about how to drive more growth, how to drive more efficiency, leverage more technologies. Yes, we will need to continue to reinforce our firepower in these areas. How to do you plan to achieve industry matching growth?It is back to my five points, frankly. First is sales intensity, how we go about chasing large deals, the appetite for growth and ambition, ready to take risks, work with partners. Secondly, invest in the right capabilities and have a differentiated offering to be more relevant, and third, how to drive focus and where we can have better impact and get a better return on investments and the right talent.You talked about leveraging partnership and investments with partners? We have different categories of partners. Companies like Salesforce, Google, AWS, Microsoft, SAP, ServiceNow and others are absolutely important partners. In my first days with Wipro, I started to connect with their CEOs; they were equally hungry to work with us and were able to connect in areas we can join forces to have a bigger impact in the market. It can be sharing our pipeline and sometimes it is going to clients together.Have you set an internal revenue target for the next two years? In the past, Wipro had talked about achieving $15 billion.I have real ambition to take Wipro back to (the top of) the Premier or Champions League (referring to football tournaments in Europe). I have a number in mind, and I will align the team around my plan, and we share the ambition. You will…see the progress quarter after quarter, you will see acceleration, there will be a point of time (when) we will grow faster than the market. I will not give you a number, (but) it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/375h7uG