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: Analysts will slice and dice the quarterly earnings numbers as usual for the next two weeks. But days before the Indian IT firms start rolling out their numbers, the real growth yardstick came from global major, Accenture chief executive William Green. “We’re working hard in this environment—it’s challenging and it’s changing… Many companies are being forced to reinvent themselves,” he said, adding that they are seeking Accenture’s expertise to transform into more efficient organisations. His strategy has worked this far. Accenture, which gets a fifth of its revenue from financial services clients, beat analysts expectations raising hopes that it could grow despite the recent turmoil in financial markets.

Indian IT firms seem to agree and are racing to hop onto transformational deals. In fact, it is one of the main reasons when the IT bigwigs, who have primarily relied on organic growth till now, are eyeing big-ticket acquisitions to become transformation partners. While Infosys and HCL are engaged in a battle to take-over UK-based SAP consultant

Axon, TCS has bought Citibank’s Indian back office operations and is reported to be eyeing Siemens IT Solutions and Service unit in Europe.

Analysts feel that these deals mark the Indian firms’ aspirations and need to look for new hunting grounds as they take on global rivals like IBM, HP and Accenture. Having won more than $10 billion worth of deals in the last nine quarters, the idea is to rework their selling proposition—low cost and quality.

Global services biggies have already started dulling Indian companies low-cost advantage by creating global delivery models. Transformational work is emerging as the key for Indian firms, striving to move up the value chain to higher-end consulting and package implementation. While Infosys and Satyam earn $1 billion from enterprise applications space, HCL Tech’s revenues from the same stands at $200 million.

Pricing of more than double of Axon’s annual revenues of £204 million might not look attractive to analysts, especially when valuations are dipping globally. But Infosys and HCL are gunning for the British firm, which enjoys 15% marketshare in the UK SAP implementation market.

Everyone thought Infosys had UK-based SAP consulting vendor, Axon under its belt, when it trumped Infosys’s £407 million bid by offering £441 million. Infosys has kept mum on whether it will bid higher, but everyone is expecting to know if it will outbid HCL now.