As the world emerges from the economic crisis, which led to drastic cuts in IT budgets, companies are looking at spending more in the next financial year as they seek cost and operational efficiencies. Accenture said though clients would formally finalise budgets only by the end of the first quarter of the calender year, initial indications look positive with more and more clients upbeat on spending. However, cost savings continues to be the primary agenda for clients along with higher flexiblility in deal structuring.
Accenture BPO executive director (Asia-Pacific) P Raghuraman told FE that there is a clear recovery in demand and client’s IT spends this year would be higher compared to last year. “Clients continue to outsource to save costs for system change, improvement in processes and other regulatory changes. But clients are also demanding more flexibility”.
He added that clients in the developed markets that are still recovering from the economic slowdown are demanding deal contracts that are based on ‘risk reward sharing model’. However, there are better growth opportunities in the emerging markets like China and India that were not as severely impacted as the matured markets. “The Asia Pacific region contributes around 10-11% to the companies’ overall revenues and this region is growing faster than other markets,” said Raghuraman.
Talking about the India market specifically, he said that there are enormous opportunities in e-governance, telecom, communications and financial services. The company has also bid as a consultant for several e-governance projects, the latest being the Centre’s ambitious unique identification project.
On being asked if the recent statements by US President Barrack Obama on ending tax-breaks to firms that ship jobs abroad will deter the company’s expansion plans in India in anyway, Raghuraman said, “We are reasonably diversified and only about a third of our revenues come from the US market. Our clients are equally diversified but it is important to keep a track of the current political scenario. However, we are having a good conversation with the clients and most of them are looking at deriving better value for their business through outsourcing,” he adds.