On 08-Nov-2021, IBM opened its new Client Innovation Center (CIC) in Mysuru to support the rapid, high-tech driven economic growth in the region and provide comprehensive hybrid cloud and AI technology consulting capabilities.
CIC is a unit of IBM Consulting (IBMC) that specializes in the design, software engineering and analytics. The CIC’s mission is to help transform their clients’ businesses and make them super-efficient through the use of Information Technology (IT).
Though the digital transformation of business is already happening across Mysuru and other Tier2/ 3 cities, the CIC’s presence will speed that up. CIC’s main focus is Small & Medium Enterprises (SME), as they represent the backbone of the Indian economy. The more efficient the Indian SMEs are, the more efficient the Indian economy will be, and this will add to the Indian Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
This exercise will create new employment opportunities for the youth in the region, thus reducing their migration to the Metros.
CIC is the technology consulting and innovation division of IBMC, which is the front end of IBM. Though CIC has many branches all over the world, in India it has 7 other centres – Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, National Capital Region and Pune. Mysuru is their 8th location.
The CIC Mysuru is a collective effort of IBMC and Karnataka digital economy mission (KDEM) – a unit of the Government of Karnataka (GoK). The mission of KDEM is to bridge the knowledge between the GoK and industry with a view of accelerating the growth and investments in the IT, BT and S&T sectors in Karnataka.
IBM consulting services (IBMC)
IBM consulting – a client-facing wing of IBM that helps companies prepare strategies and roadmaps to reach their (clients) goals. The roadmaps include clients integrating strategy, process, technology and information to increase effectiveness, reduce costs and improve profitability.
Let’s shed some light on consulting service, which is making organisations across the globe efficient.
Evolution of consulting services
At times when organisations around the globe find their growth stunted, their revenues go down while expenses remain high. This results in profit squeeze, and the problem may arise for many reasons – one of them could be due to the inability to stay with the trend OR catch up with the changing times.
In such difficult situations, when there is chaos everywhere, leadership gets busy with day-to-day fire-fighting. When that happens there is hardly any time for strategic thinking and roadmap preparation for bringing the organisation out of the woods. The efforts to put it back on the growth track will get elusive.
Organisations always have to stay relevant
Being with the trend and/ or leading the change becomes foremost important to organisations to stay relevant in this hyper-competitive world. If not, the price to pay will be too steep. There are cases when the leading companies lost sight of the future trends due to misjudgment, and had to face consequences such as shutting down their operations. Let’s look into the following cases to understand a bit more
- Eastman Kodak, the American dream company of the pre-internet era, which once was dominating the film-roll based camera business, had to file bankruptcy and shut down because they were late to recognize the upcoming “digital camera” trend, which was being led by Sony, Canon, Samsung etc. Photos stored in digital format were just evolving in the early to mid 1990s, and Kodak just let it pass by.
- Nokia mobile phone, between the 1990s till mid 2010s Nokia was calling shots when it came to mobile communication. They were leaders with over 80% market share. Unfortunately, they missed the upcoming smartphone trend which was led by Apple. Soon Nokia lost market share like crazy and became irrelevant. They too had to shut down their operations.
- Sony Music Sony once ruled the roost in the world of music with “walkman” and “discman” series of products. The company was shortsighted about the evolving digital music trend. In the year 2007, Apple launched “Ipod”, a digital music player and it became a phenomenal hit. Soon the Ipod became a “must have” gadget among music lovers, and Sony’s discman with CD based music player became obsolete and irrelevant. Sony lost big time to competition and had to face monumental losses.
Now the question is, “what has consulting services got to do with all these?” – Answer is, “consulting services can help organisations “come-out-of-woods” and kick start their growth engine”.
What is consulting service?
To put it in perspective in simple English, one who wants to do bodybuilding and win in the competition takes the help of a coach. So are people who want to win in the athletics competition. We all need coaches (experts) for our special needs – to help us achieve unachievable goals. Similarly when in crisis, organisations too need a helping hand to solve their problems and become profitable again.
Like we take outside help to achieve our goals, corporations too seek outside help from companies to reach their goals. Only an outsider can recognize the challenges and see them “as they are”, without any biases. So, only he can provide holistic solutions to them.
What constitutes consulting companies?
For offering consulting services, the service provider should understand his client’s business totally. The service provider should be well versed with current and future trends of the domain in which the client operates.
For example, a business consulting services provider should have a fair knowledge of the petrochemical business if he wants to offer consulting services to a petrochemical company. The knowledge should be holistic – raw material sourcing, logistics, technology adaptation, supply chain, finance, marketing, branding, human resourcing etc.
Some notable consulting companies are as follows
- McKinsey & co
- Boston consulting
- Bain & co
- At Kearney
- Accenture consulting
- IBM consulting
- Deloitte consulting
- KPMG
- PWC
And a few more like these.
Generally, consulting professionals are paid very high, as they do the high-end work which touches and improves the profits of their clients.
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