Careers in IT - Part 1

Most of the prospective students of MBA in India are from an IT background and lets face it..most of the jobs post MBA in India are again IT jobs :-). It would be a good idea for both the IT as well as non IT folks going in for an MBA or even doing an MBA to know what to expect..so here is a series of blogs dedicated to this. We start with jobs in IT services and will then move to products. To start with we will give a brief intro on how an IT services company functions, for those knowing this already jump below to the jobs after MBA section ..
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Lets start with a very high level explanation of how exactly an IT services company functions.

IT services companies, at a high level are divided into industry verticals including Banking & Financial Services, Insurance, Health-care, Life Sciences, Manufacturing & Logistics, Retail, Media, Technology etc. Based on technology, companies also have their horizontals including ERP, CRM, Data-warehousing, BPO, Testing Services etc. Then there are the support groups that help out all these folks – that includes finance, admin, quality etc. There are finally the line functions that include sales folks etc. Any engagement typically involves all of these entities.

Sales guys are divided by the industry verticals and are typically onsite. The sales people in the US / UK etc. (predominantly foreign nationals) contact clients (in their assigned industry vertical) and keep in touch with them on an ongoing basis. After some initial talks, client circulates a "Request for Information (RFI)" to maybe some 10 companies' sales folks that he may be in touch with. We then respond to the RFI. Response typically includes general company information, practice capabilities, etc.

The client looks at all the different responses, and probably chooses 4 – 5 companies out of that to go into the next round. Client may have some system in mind to be offshored – this may include maintenance and support of existing IT systems that the client may have, development of some new IT System, installation of some new package, portfolio analysis of the client's existing applications to standardize systems etc.

Client then circulates a "Request for Proposal" for the particular work to those selected vendors. The RFP typically goes one step further on how we would actually execute the engagement for the client, what is the proposed timeline for the work, what is the approximate pricing etc. Out of these responses, client chooses maybe 1 – 2 vendors for the final round. The client then visits us probably in India / calls us for a detailed presentation at the client's site. Price negotiations also typically happen at this stage. After these detailed rounds, client may choose 1 or more vendors to work with for the projects.

Once the client / project(s) have been won, we start work on them. We station an account manager onsite to interface with the client on a daily basis and ensure all deliveries to client happen at onsite. The account manager is the face of our company at the client site. We also station an offshore delivery manager who shall lead an offshore team to deliver the project. The typical distribution of resources for a project is 25% onsite – 75% offshore.

The account manager deals directly with the client and also takes care of the people part for the onsite resources. The offshore delivery manager does the people management, as well as resourcing, ensuring budgets are met by controlling cost / delivering ahead of timeline etc. He is the single point in-charge of all the delivery that happens from offshore. In any IT company, the predominant work (75%) happens from offshore, and that's how we are able to bring in the cost savings and value to the clients. The percentage etc. obviously varies on a case-to-case basis.

Once we get a project, the following activities typically happen. The offshore delivery manager finalizes on the processes for delivery, the typical timelines for delivery and the team that will develop the client's needs. The typical phases in a development project include

Requirements Gathering : Where we interact with clients' business users / IT users and finalize on the needs and features that need to be developed
Analysis & Design : Based on the gathered requirements, you design the system on the chosen technology. This phase typically involved deciding on the technical architecture etc. in which the system shall be implemented.

Construction & testing : Once the system is designed, it needs to be coded on the technology platform to be implemented. The developed system also needs to be tested to ensure that is bug-free.

Deployment & User testing : We then deploy the system at client site and the client users test the system to ensure that it is upto their needs.
Support & Maintenance : In many cases, we also take up the maintenance and support of the systems that we develop, on an ongoing basis. This is a continuous activity and will deal with bug-fixes that may arise at a later date, new features that users may want, handling data issues etc.

In many cases, we also take up support and maintenance directly of systems that we did not do but were developed by some other third party. In such cases, the engagement starts off with a "Knowledge Transition" phase which typically stretches for around 3 months. During the first three months, client transitions all the system knowledge to us for us to take up the support and maintenance on an ongoing basis.

Jobs After MBA in IT services

When you join as a business analyst (which you typically do) fresh out of an MBA school, the following are the types of work that you would probably do

Pre-sales activity : You help / take full ownership of responding to the RFIs and RFPs. You also help sales people by preparing presentations that they need to pitch to clients in the target markets. (US /Europe typically). You need to study the client / prospect and fine-tune content that is presented to suit client needs best. Word and Powerpoint become part and parcel of your life!
Market Intelligence : You study the industry vertical you are tagged to and analyze the segment. This could be in terms of what are the pain points in the industry, who are the key prospects that we can target, what should be our pitch to such clients, which geographies we should target, what our competitors are doing in this industry etc.
Solutions : Once you analyze the industry, you start working on frameworks / solutions that can be developed to pitch to clients. You do everything it takes to get the solution to market – including the idea, the requirements, building a team to develop it, taking it to market and convincing the sales folks to sell it etc.
Requirements for projects : With reference to the project activities that I was talking about earlier, business analysts go onsite and interface with the clients to elicit requirements from them. This usually stretches for anywhere between couple of weeks to 3 months based on the scale of the project.

After going through a stint of all of these activities, you may choose one of the following roles on a long term. The stint of all of the above activities (put-together) can be done in anywhere between 9 months – 2 years based on how much IT experience a person has prior to joining. It is also highly dependent on how well the person does once inside the job.

Account Manager : If you are OK with being placed onsite on a long term, then this role is a very good one for you. You typically start off as an account manager for a small account, managing maybe a portfolio of $ 1 million per year. As you grow over the years, you have responsibility for growing the revenues from that particular account. After a few years, you probably are in a position to guide account managers and manage a portfolio of accounts in a specific region (geography in the US / Europe typically) in a specific industry practice.
Delivery Manager : If you want to stay at offshore and want to be involved with the technical side of things, then this is the role for you. You are THE person in-charge of all of the account at offshore. You are basically the account manager's counterpart. You need to ensure flawless delivery from offshore. You are also in-charge of all the people in your account. You handle the finances for your account as well as resourcing needs, process compliance, technical requirements etc.
Domain Expert Offshore : This role is still in the very nascent stages since most of the companies still have support and development of the fringe systems for clients as their core work. As a domain consultant, you are supposed to become an expert in the industry you are tagged to. You analyze the market, get in touch with analysts (who incidentally form a very strong community in influencing decisions amongst clients), formulate solutions that we should develop to talk to the market etc.

Some other kind of roles that are also available

Enterprise Services: You shall typically involved in package implementation for clients. This typically involves around 6 months or so training on specific packages like PeopleSoft etc. You would then go to a client's site and check what the client's requirements are. You would then perform a "Gap Analysis" and fine-tune your product for the client's needs.

Corporate Strategy : A few people get into this group but the numbers are far limited. Here, you work on different engagements at corporate level for short durations and keep oscillating between different engagements. All IT companies have roles here but nothing much on a long term unless you have decent amount of experience (unless you are very lucky)

Now obviously, this post gives you a generic and high level idea of the job offerings in these companies, slight deviations can and will happen from company to company and case to case..dont hang on these words but yes chew this and get a good idea of what to expect ...

..while we work on getting to you the scene in the IT products space in our next post..

...hang in there.. :-)

* The author is an IIMB alumunus and is working for a top ranked IT services company. The views expressed here are necessarily his own and do not have any relation whatsoever to the organization he works/has worked for.