Business Today Net Special

Tete-a-Tete With Stuart Moore

Not long ago, Stuart Moore was one of the hottest CEOs on Wall Street. His technology e-consultancy, Sapient, was going places -- until the crash came along. But Moore isn't calling it quits. In fact, he's back with big plan, and this one involves making India the hub of Sapient's new global delivery model. An exclusive interview.

By Vinod Mahanta

Sapient's Stuart Moore

Q Give us a brief overview of the Sapient's worldwide operations.

A. Sapient has 2,400 people working worldwide, looking into the clients' market needs. Our primary markets are in North America, Europe, and Japan. As far as our Indian operations are concerned, till recently we had only 260 people but the number is rapidly expanding.

Q. What is the USP of Sapient, when compared with other technology consultancies?

A. The market we focus on comprises of Global 2000 clients. We focus on their critical and strategic initiatives through which they can derive significant business value. The principal reason why we have won over our clients is because we do our work in fixed time and on fixed price basis. We have a very strong record on delivery -- ninety per cent on-time delivery rate over our history. We understand that speed is important to keep our clients satisfied. One thing that differentiates us from other players is our focus on the business outcomes, which is a way of clearly defining what the clients are looking for, then relating everything back to that outcome, and measuring ourselves against the business outcome. Another area, which we started to develop in 1994, is to understand how people adopt and deploy technology. Technology creates no value unless people embrace it. As of now, we will be concentrating on adoption of technology and how people use it. We have over 50 anthropologist who study the various ways in which our clients use technology, products, systems, and services. Our clients often tell us that we have an entirely different way of getting things done. What impresses them is the commitment of our employees in contributing to their success, and carrying out a collaborative interaction with them. And all this is very important in a professional services business.

Q. How is your company surviving the downturn when every consulting company is feeling the heat?

A. Downturn is a bad patch that every company, rather every economy is experiencing. We can't help much but use this opportunity, to alter our capabilities in a significant way, to balance our skills against the demands of a new market. We have invested in revamping and refocusing our offerings around those things that create maximum value for our clients.

Q. What is your Global Delivery Model all about?

A. The major portion of our work deals with global strategic initiatives. Our model is not just about ask specification, but also to freeze it, code it offshore, and ship it back. The process is collaborative throughout. There is lot of travel and interaction among our various teams. So our people from Delhi could be travelling to client sites in North America and Europe, interacting directly with our clients there, helping them to solve the business problem and consulting and shaping business objectives and solutions. Our team from Delhi works closely with the team on the client side. We think of India as a way to deliver higher quality, faster, more cost effective the high-end strategic technology initiatives. That's what we are going to pioneer through this model.

Q. Many analysts feel that Sapiens's effort to build an offshore capability in India could be a drag on revenues and expenses as the operations are ramped up. What is your opinion?

A. We are able to offer a strategic solution to a client at a lower overall cost. We are offering a higher value result that is cost effective, faster and ensures better quality.

Q. Where do you see the role of India in Sapient's worldwide operations?

A. Currently, we are not pursuing clients in India. So it's much more about having to expand our base of high-end people to deliver value. It's central to our strategy to have a large and growing capability in India. We will expand beyond Delhi someday but being in India is central to our strategy because of the quality of people. And you can now do strategic high end new initiatives in India and break that mental model of India just being for maintenance or support work.

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