Wipro expand 'footprint' into Finance Transformation

Rakesh Sangani: Why did you move from Ernst & Young to Wipro?

Tomas Romero: The challenge presented by Wipro Consulting Services to expand our footprint into Finance Transformation Services was very attractive to me. If one looks at Wipro, it is easy to realise the scale of the opportunity. Wipro have a strong credible background with incredible growth in Enterprise Applications, ITO and BPO - this means that there is a great client base and excellent relationships that can be leveraged to support the growth of Finance Transformation services.

On top of this, I was impressed by the high calibre of the Wipro leadership team, and coupled with the approach of the client partners, practice partners and management consulting staff, I sensed a real camaraderie and thought this could be an exciting environment where teams were driven to build and grow the Wipro Consulting Services offerings. I can tell you that since the time I have joined the leadership team, the excitement level is going up every passing day.

RS: What can Wipro plan to achieve in Consulting? What is the vision?

TR: Wipro Consulting Services have a vision to be the Transformational Consulting Partner of choice for its clients. We aim to solve our clients’ "big enterprise problems" with "big solutions".

The fact that our offering includes elements such as Wealth Management solutions, Enterprise Shared Services Advisory solutions, Next Generation Human Capital Transformation solutions and other Operational Business Transformation enabled by technology solutions allows us to leverage our experience and make our vision a reality since clients get better solutions at lower cost – better, faster, less expensive with higher productivity.

RS: How can you compete with the True Transformational Consulting Providers?

TR: Do not be fooled - we can compete and we are competing! I meet them in almost all the deals that we contest. So far, Wipro Consulting Services has grown to over 1,200 consultants across our regional landscape supporting our client base across Telecoms, Media, Technology, Financial Services, Manufacturing, Life Sciences, and other industry sector clients across Cost Optimization programmes, Business Transformation Enterprise programmes, IT Cost Reduction Programmes, Sox Compliance through global delivery solutions, and Improving efficiencies across a number of support areas (Finance, HR, Customer Contact, Supply Chain).

True transformation for Wipro Consulting clients reside on the added value that we can provide them into their P&L or bottom lines at cost or revenue optimisation levels. Our clients will tell you that we tend to put ourselves in their shoes and to drive value from everything that we do, let that be reducing the amount of supplier leakage through duplicate payments to working capital strategies to increase cash from revenue. On every engagement that we take up our measurement criteria is ensuring superior financial impact and positive impact to our customers’ customer.

RS: For significant scale, will Wipro not need to acquire capability in consulting?

TR: Over the past few years, Wipro has not been shy about acquisitions to increase our footprint across market or industry verticals. We have been following string of pearls policy and are constantly looking at companies who are strategic and a cultural fit to Wipro, and at this time there are opportunities in adversity that Wipro Consulting Services will consider. We had acquired AMS and NerveWire to add to our organically grown team.

However, in terms of scale, we have grown the practice to 1,200 staff this past year even in a global financial crisis, which is a fantastic achievement, and means that we do not need to acquire to grow and to attract the best! Due to the reputation, client value and size of our Applications Management, Information Technology and Business Process Outsourcing businesses, we are able to easily attract excellent talent into Wipro Consulting Services.

RS: How will Wipro change the perception of a ITO player to a true business consultant?

TR: As our Consulting practice has expanded its services and presence across the globe, the perception of being a pure ITO player is changing. Our business objectives are set out to ensure clients across Wipro businesses understand the type of consulting and advisory services they can now count on.

It is great to hear clients say to us "we didn’t know that your consulting business had this great offering, we would like to utilise your capabilities", but it also means that we still have more work to do. We have to keep focusing on getting value one client at a time since value is the key definition for a true business consultant.

RS: Are you focusing on particular markets or type of solutions in F&A?

TR: Within the Finance & Accounting Transformation practice, we have been focusing across markets and industry verticals with customised point solutions and services focused on providing measurable and transformational change to our Clients. These include:

• Procure to Pay Solutions: Duplicate Payment, Payables Reengineering, Purchasing Reengineering, 3-Way Matching with Supplier Fronting, etc.
• Order to Cash Solutions: Working Capital Management / Debt Process Management, Customer Data Management, Billing Reengineering, Business Intelligence
• Record to Report Solutions: Fast Close, Financial Reporting, CoA, Consolidations, IFRS, Sox Compliance Testing, Intra-Company and Inter-Company, and Budgeting and Planning
• Record to Retire Solutions: Capitalisation Accounting, Project Accounting, and Asset Management

RS: What is your route to market – in other words, how will you win sales in F&A?

TR: Our route to market for our clients is twofold:

1. Leveraging our strong relationships with existing clients: The challenge in Wipro, as at many multi-disciplinary firms, is for the propositions and Consultants to be strong enough to survive the quality assessment by the internal Client Account Leads and Client Partners, before they are even presented to our Clients.
2. Winning new clients: We run thought leadership and client forum sessions across specific industries and functions which provide us with a platform for developing strong client relationships and channels for revenue development.

[eventpdf]