Wipro had invited the European Analyst & Advisor community to their 2012 EMEA Analyst Briefing in Athens, Greece. During the 1.5-day event, Wipro brought a high number of customers to the stage who talked about their current key strategic IT programs and about the role Wipro is playing therein. The range of examples demonstrated by Wipro’s customers does by far not only cover the typical services for which IT users worked with Indian providers in the past. The demonstrated customer cases are all programs focusing on real transformation from an infrastructure area to business applications transformation and the current hot topics around Mobility, Social & Cloud.

The common tenor of all Wipro customers talking about their collaboration with Wipro is that Wipro has appeared a very flexible partner who gives very proactive advice and is really strong in the transition phase of an engagement.

At this point I would like to mention that the customers made these statements not only on stage, they repeated them at coffee breaks as well.

As for the sessions in which Wipro positioned itself, its strategy, approach and what it does on the portfolio side, I would like to point out that for the last 12 months Wipro has consistently worked on the strategy it started when the current Wipro CEO, TK Kurien, took over responsibility.

Wipro is clearly moving forward in the migration from a pure services company, renowned for development and maintenance services, to a solution provider with a clear portfolio which is increasingly focusing on solutions – both the ones based on packaged solutions from software partners as well as real vertical and horizontal solutions based on Wipro’s IP.

Wipro has accelerated its climb up the value chain, and the portfolio and positioning it is working on are clearly oriented towards the business value for its customers.

In summary, I would like to point out that if you still regard Wipro as a typical offshore provider who is considered for commodity services and cost improvement reasons only, you should think again and have a closer look at who Wipro has meanwhile become.

As a last comment I would like to add that Wipro is only an example, and a very good one due to the impressive speed with which it has transformed itself during the last 18-24 months – but it is also one of several tier-1 Indian suppliers who made a leap forward in their positioning as partners for higher-value services and transformation programs, leaving the field of action as IT services partners mainly focused on pure commodity services at lower costs.

What I clearly expect is that Wipro as well as the other tier-1 Indian service providers are also going to move forward with their localization strategies and their increase in local presence as well as in the number of native speaking consultants in Europe. Here I especially refer to Continental Europe. Wipro could demonstrate its strengths and capabilities even to more ‘conservative’ or locally/regionally oriented customers, to whom especially in the ramp-up phase of a program a high share of onsite consultants (ideally native speaking) is important. Due to these customers’ lower level of experience in offshoring, onsite native speaking consultants represent a key success factor in the execution of strategic IT programs.

I expect that in this issue more moves are yet to come.

Post by Klaus Holzhauser