IDC has a report titled "HCL Technologies and its Verticalization Strategy at Work in Europe", Below are some interesting excerpts from the same:

HCL in Europe targets five sectors (financial services, retail and utility, telecom and media, high tech and manufacturing, and life sciences), which are further segmented in a number of micro-verticals.

The company positions itself directly in competition with big IT giants such as IBM and Accenture, as it is also strongly focused on infrastructure management.

HCL business volumes in Europe and customer references are impressive

IDC recognizes the value that HCL is creating through its verticalization strategy since it can be very difficult to target big and complex European companies without expertise on their business issues.

HCL still faces problems of communication. The company has not yet achieved a mature marketing strategy and is therefore working to improve its efforts in the short term.

HCL has identified the following key services:
! Business and IT consulting
! Legacy modernization
! Application architecture services
! Business analytics services

The three most important vertical industries in Europe are:
! Financial services. The financial services sector is segmented into the retail and corporate banking, insurance, and capital markets areas. HCL's expertise and references are particularly strong in investment banking and life insurance.
! Retail. HCL is focused on distinct segments such as specialty retail (apparel and footwear, health and beauty, fashion, pharma retailers, electronic and electric
retailers), food and grocery, general merchants, hotels and restaurants, and consumer packaged goods.
! Telecom. Within the telecom vertical, HCL's integrated offering includes turnkey implementations, system integration, and concept-to-field implementation as well as services such as remote infrastructure management and business process outsourcing across all elements of the communications ecosystem (telcos, ISVs,
and OEMs).

HCL's Differentiators

An Unusual Competitive Arena
HCL Technologies does not compete with the usual Indian IT companies but instead positions its offering directly against the big IT giants such as IBM and Accenture.HCL's focus on infrastructure management is unusual for a company with Indian origins and allows HCL to offer to its customers a new type of IT infrastructure outsourcing option.

Full Outsourcing
HCL is able to engage in projects that involve the responsibility for an IT function,unlike from those companies that engage mainly in application development or maintenance projects.

Employees First
HCL believes that employees are its most valuable asset. For this reason HCL encourages employees to speak with executives as it believes this will create a better environment in which to work.

The Fixed-Salary Approach
At HCL, 85% of non-BPO employees have a fixed salary. HCL believes that by motivating employees through linking salary to something on which employees do not have a direct impact can be very frustrating and misleading.

IDC believes that major focus points for the short term in order to better target the European market will be:
! Focus on communication
! Continuous investment in building vertical-specific expertise
! Concentrate efforts on building customer proximity, working hard on cultural barriers
! Consider the opportunity to build delivery capabilities in Europe in order to gain more proximity and to better spread geographic risk
! Continue to rely on a culture of meritocracy and on investing in employees

Source: 1

Tags: Europe - it+services - India - hcl - hcltech

Prashanth Rai