I was in India last week and visited with a couple of outsourcing firms. In my travels, I got reminders of several due diligence visits I had helped clients with from 2003 to 2010. The Renaissance in Powai reminded me I had stayed there with a client during a visit to TCS. A Cognizant executive reminded me of visit with another client to Chennai. A drive-by the Hinjewadi building of Persistent reminded me of a visit with yet another client.
A bit of deja vu, all over again.
My firm, Deal Architect has helped a number of clients evaluate SIs, negotiate hosting and AMS contracts. Before that I had a marketplace startup which helped customers develop digital services RFPs and evaluate responses. Prior to that at Gartner, I helped a number of clients with their ERP SI evaluations. India and E. Europe have actually been a small part of the landscape across which we have helped clients with services procurements for a couple of decades.
The time is right to help clients with their new wave of services procurements - as they move to S/4HANA, as they evaluate cloud infrastructures, as they look for post implementation support around their cloud apps.
It's a new world - not sure vendors have evolved enough in skills, methods or automation.
Clients need a deja vu to avoid some of the mistakes we all made in the last wave. Look forward to helping several of them.
