Consultants can play a big role in making India a developed country, says Mr Arun Maira at IIFTs Consulting Symposium

While addressing at IIFTs National Consulting Symposium on August 9,Mr Maira said, India is a unique nation characterized by three Ds: Diversity, Democracy and need of Development. We have less time, and more work to do. If India has to meet its potential, consultants should make organizations work better, and engage billion people in the process. The theme of the IIFT symposium was Changing business scenarios & new frontiers in consultancy and was held in New Delhi on August 9 at IIFT campus in New Delhi. PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PHDCCI) partnered this initiative; Technopak was the knowledge partner; and MBAUniverse.com was the media partner.

In his keynote address, Mr Maira classified consultants into four types: information providers, planning & strategy consultants, those that also work on execution, and finally the best consultant who guides the organizational transformation while making organizations seek their own answers. Consultants tell you the time by looking at your watch. Sometimes organizations question their usefulness. But the best consultants are those that make the organization answer their own questions, while leading the process of self discovery, he said.

Other speakers at the symposium included Mr Sanjay Bhatia, President, PHDCCI M Ashvin Parekh, Partner, Risk and Business Solutions, National Industry Leader (Financial Services), Ernst & Young; Mr Sanjay Kulkarni, MD, Stern Stewart; Ms Kalpana Jain, Sr Director, Deloitte & Touche; Mr Sridhar V, Director, OC&C Strategy Consultants; Mr Sanjeev Krishnan, ED, PricewaterCoopers (PWC); Mr Ashish Basil, Partner, Ernst & Young (E&Y); Mr Sandip Patel, Country Leader, IBM Business Consulting Services; Mr Manoj Soni, Director, Oracle India; Mr V Swamy, Director, Global Consulting Practice, TCS;Mr Anil Rajpal, Vice President, Retail, Technopak; Mr Ramit Gupta, AVP, Avlon Consulting; Mr Sanjai K, Director, SAP Labs and Mr Amitava Sain, Senior Principal Consultant, PWC.

The day-long symposium was divided into three panel discussions: Changing Scenario of M&A - Format v/s Content in Consulting, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Re-inventing the Value Chain.

Noticing the increasing trend of merger & acquisitions (M&As) in India, the speakers provided insights on the challenges in the sector and the role of consultants. Stern Stewarts Mr Sanjay Kulkarni said, According to research, 50 to 70 per cent M&As fail. This is very alarming! Its the target company that tends to gain more than the acquirer. The key challenge in an M&A is the acquisition price and how well it is executed.

Mr Sridhar of OC & C Strategy Consultants said that consultants and corporates should understand the principles used by private equity investors, who do much better at M&As. Sharing the private equity mantras, he added, Private equity players want the M&A company to keep the focus the core operations, cut costs and focus on cash.

After the discussion on M&As, the next issue to be discussed was Software as a Business where the focus was on how software-platforms can move from being just products to value-added consulting services. E&Ys Mr Ashish Bashil said, Software consulting is a way of selling software in which a vendor or services provider hosts the applications and makes them available to customers as a service rather than as a product. Webex communication and Salesforce.com are good examples.

The last session on Reinventing the value chain had Technopaks Mr Anil Rajpal sharing his views on the evolution of retailing in India and its impact on the value chain. He said, Indian retail is expected to become close to 12% of the total economy by 2015. We believe that through the modern format, supply chain will become more organized, leaner and more responsive.