5 Points to Consider for IT Services Sales to Government Organizations

I have been working in government sector for last six years. In my opinion, the business landscape for sales of IT services in different governments / government organizations in India has been slowly changing over these years. Based on these observations, I have tried to list following five points for consideration of IT Services Sales professionals:-  

1.     Go Beyond the Power Point Presentations – Companies use Power Point Presentations (PPP) to explain their understanding about the assignment and to explain the solution they propose. Probably, now is time to go beyond Power Point Presentations (PPP) to explain the government customers about the capabilities of a company to perform any assignment. This means, while explaining the solution, in addition to the slide-pack, a live demonstration of functional products similar to the assignment or closely associated with the assignment could add meaningful value to the presentation session. Similarly, display of relevant papers (clear, concise and conclusive white papers or research results) published in reputed journals (and available online with comments, discussions and responses) help in establishing a company as a sensible and credible organization in professional fraternity.

2.     Go for Strategic Specialization - Government organizations are now having much better grip on understanding of IT (Information Technology) implementation and on managing IT projects. Critical differentiations in products and services, which result in enhanced project outcome do not go unnoticed by those professionals, who manage projects from government side. Similarly, advantages due to grip on industry vertical or excellence in project execution through tried and tested methodologies or improved quality of deliverables due to unique contributions from experienced professionals get recognized much better than ever before. Consistency in maintaining such type of differentiations in competitive market is not possible unless a focused and conscious effort to specialize in niche area, strategically suited to a company, is practiced with utmost sincerity. Time and again, it is stablished that in long runs Specialist beats Generalist. Therefore, it is worth to invest in specialization for improving long term business prospects.

3.     Go Market-Pull Way in Government Business Now – IT vendors and government organizations now have a better understanding on challenges of implementation of IT initiatives in government sector. At the same time, technology diffusion and technology adoption by larger population in recent times seem to be bringing socio-cultural changes in favor of extensive use of technology (by citizens at large) for getting associated with different agencies. Even many employees feel more comfortable to communicate through electronic means for day to day working in government offices. These developments seem to have made implementation of IT projects easier than ever before. But more importantly, these changes are indicating vendors for a shift from Technology Push towards Market (Public) Pull strategy as the demand for technology is getting generated at the level of beneficiaries (or at times end users of product and services). So, now the companies having aspirations to become a vendor for governments can identify a need and develop (or customize) products and services to best fit the identified need in the proposals sent to government organizations. If public procurement is done at right timing and if a suitable product / services with right positioning in market is selected through procurement process, public pull may help in ensuring successful implementation of IT projects. This is in contrast to earlier times, when vendors had promising technology at hand for government organizations to use but making the government organizations and end users (beneficiaries) understand the value added benefits from technology used to be quite a challenge. In those times, vendors used to “push” technology through the bureaucratic (government) organizations first and if they succeeded then they used to push the technology down to implementing team and eventually to beneficiaries.

4.     Go Beyond Conventional Turnkey Projects and Look for Smaller Opportunities – The latest trend in IT related government procurement appears to be in favor of avoiding large RFPs (Request for Proposals) with multiple consortium partners, with hidden complexities, with unknown risks and with detailed requirements (which takes a year to gather). Instead, the preference is shifting towards developing agile procurement capability to deliver incremental agency value on a regular basis through bringing on-board specialized vendors for every logical piece of work. IT hardware procurement (which is more of a product purchase with huge Capex expenditure) is usually segregated from IT software services (which is more of a service purchase with dominant Opex expenditure). In the new arrangement of small and specific tenders, mid-sized niche players get a chance to compete, to perform their piece of task with perfection and get the payment released quickly.

5.     Go for Excellence in Delivery – Nothing can establish a company much better than the quality of delivery. In long run, this holds true even for government sector, which is increasingly getting quality conscious. In this regards, many experts believe that pressure to perform on government organizations is slowly changing the way public procurement is done in government organizations and concerns of departments are shifting towards delivered products / services in addition to the budget and UCs (Utilization Certificates).  

I believe that despite the fact that procurement is done through free and fair tenders in government sector (in which pricing is believed to play critical role despite QCBS – Quality and Cost Based System of procurement), the relative excellence in delivery holds the backbone for continuous business prospects. All this is more relevant to IT product / services where quality of professionals and professional services make the critical difference.  

In my opinion, howsoever good the sales team be or how so good the management be, the genuine competitive advantage for an IT Service Company can be attributed to a clear strategy and to the quality of delivery (of product and services) done by the technical team. Therefore, strategic investment on technology excellence and on nurturing technical team to boost performance and to acquire new skills contributes significantly to continuous sales prospects in larger span of time.   

 

Reference for Photograph - https://pixabay.com/en/hook-award-line-quality-done-405092/

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Correlation of e-Gov Transactions with Some Other State Wise Data of Indian States

This is an attempt to find correlation of some of the aspects of State Wise Data of Indian States with e-Gov Transactions data available at e-taal website (e-taal is a web portal for dissemination of e-Transactions statistics of National and State level e-Governance Projects including Mission Mode Projects). The respective correlation coefficients are given in the table (TABLE - 1) below. The details are displayed in excel sheet in the following list:-

 

Correlation of eGov Transaction Data with some of the State Wise Data of Indian States (For TABLE - 1)

 

 TABLE - 1

Correlation Coefficients of eTransaction/1000 Population* (eTx) with respect to some of  State Wise Data of Indian States
eTx with Population	0.082481
eTx with Sex-Ratio	0.270576
eTx with Literacy	0.20019
eTx with Urbanization	0.247364
eTX with Density of Population	0.036462
eTx with Area of State	0.126776
References : - http://www.census2011.co.in/states.php
*STATE WISE eTRANSACTION / 1000 POPULATION (source-e-Taal, 1 JAN 2015 till 31 MAR 2016)
Provisional data released by Census India, Census 2011 (http://indiafacts.in/india-census-2011/urban-rural-population-o-india/)

 

Some more correlation coefficients are given in the tables (TABLE - 2 & 3) below. Related investigations on the data are details in the sheet that can be accessed through following link:-

Correlation of eGov Transaction Data with some of the State Wise Data of Indian States with other related calculations (for TABLE - 2 and TABLE - 3)

TABLE - 2

Correlation Coefficient of eTransaction/1000 Population* (eTx) with respect to some of  State Wise Data of Indian States
eTx with (Literacy + Urbanization)	0.28110838
eTx with (Literacy + Urbanization + % Sex-Ratio)	0.34426227
eTx with (Urbanization + % Sex-Ratio)	0.34116737

TABLE - 3

Some other related Correlation Coefficients
% Sex-Ratio with Urbanization	-0.187446439
Literacy(%) with Urbanization	0.62547127
% Sex-Ratio with Literacy	-0.025630917

An attempt to assess the above data has been made in the points below. However, based on the following discussions, it may not be possible to reach to conclusions:-

1. From TABLE - 1, Correlation Coefficients of eTransaction/1000 Population (eTx) with respect to Sex-Ratio and Urbanization have been observed to be having higher values (0.27 & 0.25 respectively). NeGP (National e-Governance Plan) was initiated in 2008. In 2015, the next phase of e-Governance Initiative has been started under Digital India program. Let us assume that by now more or less similar e-Government service facilities are available across India for rendering basic government services. Therefore, the correlation figures may suggest that e-Governance services are seen to have been used more extensively in the states with higher  Urbanization and better Sex-Ratios.
2. TABLE - 3 suggest marginal negative correlation between Sex-Ratio and Urbanization. This can be explained through many studies. Evidence show that the practice of sex-selective abortions is more prevalent in urban areas and amongst the well educated women. (Guilmoto, C.Z. (2007), “Characteristics of sex- ratio imbalance in India and future scenarios”,UNFPA and Jha, P., Kumar,R., Vasa,P., Dhingra,N., Thiruchelvam,D. and Moineddin, R. (2006), “Low maleto-female sex ratio of children born in India: national survey of 1.1 million households”, The Lancet, 367 (9506): 211- 218 )  
3. In an attempt to understand better correlation between eTx and Sex-Ratio (observed in point - 1 above), if it could be assumed that better Sex-Ratio indicate Gender Equality and similarly, use of eTransaction by more and more people indicate general inclination for more accessible, friendly and service oriented democratic institutions, then the work on Gender Equality and Democracy by  Ronald Inglehart; Pippa Norris and Christian Welzel indicating that growing emphasis on gender equality is a central component of the process of democratization seems to be holding true. (Source - Comparative Sociology, Volume 1, Issue 3, pages 321 – 345; 2002; ISSN: 1569-1322 E-ISSN: 1569-1330)
4. The correlation between eTx and Urbanization can be attributed to a strong digital divide in urban population with respect to rural population in India. At national level, there is no single (digital) divide, but multiple (digital) divides: for instance; within countries, between men and women, young and elderly, rich and poor and most importantly rural and urban (Dr. Sumanjeet Singh, Ramjas College Digital Divide in India: Measurement, Determinants and Policy for Addressing the Challenges in Bridging the Digital Divide; JEL Codes: R58; Z13; O33; I38). The phrase “digital divide” refers to the unique and disproportionate pace of development in societies in having access to digital infrastructure and services (Paul,J .2002). 

References:-

http://www2.hw.ac.uk/sml/downloads/economics/HW_DP_2012_01.pdf
http://www.ijsrp.org/research-paper-1213/ijsrp-p2471.pdf
http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/156913302100418628
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/dc77/1e7870961e84b4134bb22939f0ef8db4b370.pdf
Image - http://www.shutterstock.com/

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5 Points to keep in mind while Conceptualizing a Project

Conceptualization of a project is the first and a critical stage in a project life-cycle. This is also termed as DPR phase in some of government projects, which involves preparation of DPR (Detailed Project Report). During this stage, a series of activities are carried out to establish that idea of the project is feasible and to ensure that outcome of the project will yield intended benefits. Consensus on the project idea and feasibility among stakeholders is sought, scope is defined and verified, deliverable are broadly finalized, tentative estimate related to time-cost-quality are finalized, project design and execution methodology is approved and major risks are identified. There are many tools and technologies available to help the Project Managers in the Project Conceptualization and most of the managers use them to be thorough and convincing with their proposals on conceptualization. However, it may be noted that project managers keep on learning and are consistently trying for perfecting themselves in project management approach and in application of tools and technologies to projects. Through my learning from different projects I have been associated with in last sixteen years of work experience, I feel keeping in back of mind the following points may be helpful for managers during conceptualization of projects:-  

1. Recognize the Projects as Change Agents 

While any Project is a Temporary Organization with a definite beginning and a definite end, the outcome of projects are usually long lasting. It is observed that outcome of most of projects are expected to have a profound impact on beneficiary community or are expected to become an integral part of implementing organization. In many cases, projects and programs act as organizational strategy implementation tools and progress of projects give feedback on strategic decisions taken by organizations for business sustainability or business expansion. This means, successful implementation of projects are important for future prospects of organizations and more importantly, in a way, this means that projects (and/or programs) play critical role of effective Change Agents. 

A due considerations must be given to change agent aspect of a project. Not only, must a suitable change management plan be incorporated as a part of project plan, but it should also be ensured that change management plan gets executed to the extent that changes brought about by projects are well adapted for maximization of benefits of projects. 

In this regards, assessment of impact of project in larger perspective may be considered. Indirect impacts of project to society at large and relation of the project outcomes to other projects within different programs must be accounted in the project assessment metrics.

   

2. Harness Learning from the Project

New learning during implementation of a project is critical for trapping the drifts in business environment. Therefore, minute observation of the learning from a project and establishing suitable correlation with information available from other sources could lead to important inputs. Such inputs could be helpful in supporting sensible decision making (to the business strategists, program managers or organizational change managers). At times, these inputs also help in assessment of continuous organizational adaptability for possible challenges expected in future. This holds true for all the different organizations participating in execution of project even though the perspective with which the organizations look at the project may differ. Thus, a Project Designer should keep in mind that apart from fulfillment of objectives of the project, all the learning from the project should get thoroughly processed through the Knowledge Management Framework (of participating organizations) with an intent to enrich organizational understanding of changing business dynamics. 

3. Streamline Efforts made by Executing Partners

In large projects, different project responsibilities are shared with different executing partners. Each executing partner is usually bound to deliver product or services in accordance its obligation defined in contractual agreement. However, exactly who owns the onus to implement the project (Lead Executor) must be very clear to all the stakeholders. And keeping the Lead Executor at the center, the project governance model must be designed for establishing appropriate accountability and control during execution of the project. In the governance model, through suitable provisions, the Lead Executor must be made to be sensible in approach towards business interests of other executing partners. This organizes all the executing partners under a single umbrella and this also  increases mutual trust among the executing partners by reducing mutual frictions (among executing partners) when deviations in time-cost-quality triad is experienced during course of project execution impacting divergent business interests (of executing partners).   

The project should be able to function as an autonomous body and the Lead Executor should be able to exercise powers with authority to take decisions in the best interest of the project (of course, within the framework of project governance model and with suitable justification supported through facts and figures). Similarly, the project execution team should be adequately empowered to get the required resources from different stakeholders as a right. 

In certain cases, when the Lead Executor role is with government department or with an organization with bureaucratic culture, the executing partners of international repute having result oriented approach and commitment to best practices for quality delivery (of goods and services) struggle to work in synchronized manner. Such instances are observed with many e-Governance projects in India (and may be in many other developing countries). Mr. Narayan Murthy, co-founder of Indian Information Technology giant Infosys has once told “I know about Infosys there is not a single project Infosys has done and I believe the same story where the company has not lost money, that’s a reality, when dealing with the governments,”. (in an interview with representative form CNBC-TV18)

Probably, bureaucratic way of project management introduces culture of hierarchical subordination among executing partners and among professionals participating in the project. Hierarchy limits application of creativity in execution required for implementation of multi-disciplinary, multi-dimensional, multi-stakeholder, technology intensive and complex projects having huge sums of money at stake.   

4. Orient Project Team towards Successful Implementation of the Project 

Execution of project is a teamwork. Every member participating in the team must associate with sole intent to make the project successful. It may be noted that chances of success of the project is severely limited without team members establishing personal bonding through a sense of belonging with the project. Project is a temporary organization and professionals usually associate for a short term with the project. For professionals, the project is a means to contribute to the best of their abilities for the success of the project, to enhance their experience and skills by facing new challenges of different dimensions and to do networking with other professionals. 

But, more importantly, each professional assumes that working for the project will eventually contribute to strengthen the long term association with the organization, which has deputed her/him (parent organization) into the project. A fair and transparent mechanism to ensure that performance in the project will surely translate into the professionals’ long term association with her/his parent organization can make a difference.  

Therefore, irrespective of which executing partner, a team member belongs to, a well-defined reward and recognition mechanism linked to contribution in the project must be ensured in concurrence with parent organizations of the professionals. These rewards and recognition must translate to strengthening long term career prospects for each of the team member (may be better income, better stature, better location or better work-life balance). 

5. Ensure Professionals with Required Expertise Run the Project 

Domain experts having significant experience of contributing to similar projects are the best persons to plan, execute, monitor and control projects. It should be understood that application of project management tools and technologies or project management methodologies can be most appropriately done by the people who can really understand the environment and dynamics of work to be executed. Leaders having lack of technical depth fail to make timely and meaningful decisions contributing to success of project. Therefore, ensuring that skillful experts (with domain expertise, know-how on applied technologies, business understanding and project management experience) lead the project with thorough professionalism contributes towards successful project implementation. 

Photograph downloaded from www.us.fotolia.com (https://us.fotolia.com/id/95342356)

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