Outsourcing Digest interview with Patrick Corcoran – Senior Director at Luxoft, published on 1st August, 2017.
GB: Hello everyone, my name is Gurdeep and I’m from Outsourcing Digest and I am here to talk about ‘how the buying process is evolving in the services outsourcing environment’. So allow me to introduce Patrick Cochran, he is the Global Director at Luxoft and he manages industry analyst, sourcing advisors and public relations. Welcome Patrick.
PC: Thank you for having me Gurdeep.
GB: My pleasure. So Patrick would you please let us know a little more about yourself, your role, responsibilities and your journey with Luxoft so far.
PC: Sure, I had the pleasure to join Luxoft at the mid end of 2013, right after they had gone public on the New York Stock Exchange and was tasked with maturing the industry analyst relationships. So at that point in time, despite Luxoft working with clients both in Western Europe and North America, there were still somewhat of an unknown vendor when you benchmark them against the large tier ones, whether they be Western or India heritage firms, and so obviously, a starting point in that into in building the brand is to have the industry analysts that study the vendors, obviously, delivering out of Philippines, China, India, Mexico, onshore (what you would consider areas in Western Europe primarily France, Germany) let them understand who Luxoft really is. And at that point, we were thirteen years since being founded in 2000. So, it made sense to start with those who are tasked with studying the IT services world and that was the original challenge to get the industry analysts up to speed on who we are, what we’re doing, and I think most importantly why we’re different. And that took a long time, you know. This is not something that gets done in a three-month period where all the sudden everyone stands up and says ‘oh I understand Luxoft now’ because you have to think about your task both vertically, horizontally but also technologically, go-to-market, certainly financially plays a role in what they look at. So after about a year and a half, we decided to then switch gears, and well maybe I should say add on the gear, into the sourcing advisory world because we were big enough at that point to actually work on potential opportunities that they may be working on from an end-user side. And now, that we had sort of the industry analysts buy-in that was a good reading on for the sourcing advisors to use in order to get more familiar with us, because they’re much more in the front office in terms of working with clients where the industry side is much more in the sort of the ivory tower to some extent but also engage with clients. So they’re looking at these a much longer term trend and understanding the strategy and then from then on in we started to aggressively build a public relations function that’s both responsible for the B2B initiatives but also what we call B2E which is ‘business to employee’ marketing programs that we do globally mainly in countries where we’re doing delivery from, and you know this function obviously is reporting right into the CMO which means we are aligned to what the story of the organization is moving forward. So I’ve now been here almost four years has had the very humbled experience of working in now three segments which now fall under the external relations umbrella which is obviously under the Marketing Director.
GB: (Awesome) okay and you had these three functions of industry analysts, sourcing advisors and public relations functions of your company, right.
PC: Right.
GB: Okay, great. So Patrick can you share some experiences because I’ve been talking to a lot of people how the how the traditional buying processes are changing and a lot of automation, digitalization, business models are changing. Even the stakeholders in some organizations are changing when you talk about digitalization. So can you share some experiences because you have been with Luxoft since four years and you’re being part of the marketing team, sales team and might be involved actively interacting with buyers and advisors as well. So can you share some experiences on how do you see the traditional buying processes changing, how the stakeholders are changing, how the business models are changing in the current services outsourcing environment.
PC: yeah so there’s a few ways to look at this. Now from Luxoft perspective, we are an IT service provider that has not had a legacy service offering division to it. In other words, when you look at you know a lot of what some of the analyst firms cover a lot of it’s around data center, infrastructure, ERP implementation, which are still critical to both the business and the technology side within these organizations the end-user side and then you have a large obviously infrastructure piece which is made up of help desk, service desk etc. Because Luxoft has not been involved in that type of work which I think is arguably very commodity driven now, we don’t have that legacy behind us where we have to now transform certain areas because we’re losing jobs to robotics or you know however the media is playing the hybrid. So for us, because we’ve been focused on the mode two work, right, or the agile driven application development side, it’s been an interesting path for us because we’ve always been focused on mission-critical. We’ve always been focused on complexity. We’ve always been focused on change the business and that has I think got us a leg up in the offering as a service provider. Now what that means is all the other providers are dealing with very similar stakeholders in terms of vendor management, procurement that type of work and obviously CIO or CTO related depending on the type of project, which formerly used the reporting to the CFO, all right so it always just cost-savings element attached to it. But because business is becoming so competitive now, across industries the consumer matters more than ever before to some and the other business b2b matters ever more than ever before right so what you’re what you’re now facing is the business unit involvement in services and technology, you know, i.e. how do you help me sell my product better, how do you help me keep my client longer, you know, how do I differentiate myself further and further from the other organizations in my industry and so there’s been a lot of dialogue what we see internally between business stakeholders, technology stakeholders and vendor management stakeholders. So I think there’s been a lot of people who argued that the role of vendor management has gone by the wayside and the business units are taking over, you know, I would argue that there’s actually more of a collaborative effort happening than ever before. And one example is what I’m seeing is creation of centers of expertise from an end user side that are responsible for managing relationships between business units. technology units, internal IT, you know, and it’s creating a very collaborative effort because everyone has the same angle, right, improve the business (right) and that’s not minimizing anyone’s important, it’s just changing the model in the way that purchasing services in particular areas is moving so that’s how I’m seeing it, just based on my own dialogue and interactions across the board.
GB: Okay. So would you just share some or throw some light on the approaches of leading service provider like Luxsoft: what kind of approaches do you follow when we talk about, you know, the changing environment of buying process, how do you kind of help buyers or, you know, reach out to buyers to make a more informed decision and what kind of approaches do you see that are changing and/ or you are following in Luxoft.
PC: So I think, you know, that is an interesting question. You know, one I would say across the board it really depends on, you know, the
client need and in some instances the client doesn’t really know what the need is (yes) and that’s our job, right, we having to go in there with our consulting arm, bolting them a technical and a business side to help them understand what can be most beneficial to them in the industry that they’re focused on and that’s based upon several factors, right, one is obviously the stakeholders that work at Luxoft have lots of experience from industries to, you know, we clearly rely a lot on third parties to give us the best advice on how to approach certain areas and obviously three, you know, we have this you have when you have domains and you have lines of businesses there’s focus to look at, you know, what’s the emerging in the bleeding trend and that’s always horizontalized as well. So we have a nice model here, where we have what we call Luxoft Digital, supporting our various lines of business, where they’re acting. So what it gives us is the ability to run workshops, for example, on making the client understand what could be most beneficial for them moving forward and from the same time when you look at a delivery piece from overall services offering, we’ve implemented many improvements in relationships with our customers because we want to get them to the next level of that technology stack. Many transformational engagements with the global emotion to the global multinationals and, you know, obviously working again with this collaborative ethos of service buying end-users within the organization. So the ability to walk them through this in a partnership model rather than an a why buying from X has certainly been a big value to see what they need and to help them understand what they could do better.
GB: Okay so and how do you see your role as a external relations head, you know, that’s a mix of industry analysts, sourcing advisors and public relations, implement those approaches or maybe make some changes or innovate in those approaches. How do you see your importance, your role fit in that you know implementing those approaches.
PC: Well, you know, when you look at this function, I am a mirror of the organization (right) so we have been successful in these relationships, you know, not because I’m knocking on doors and getting attention but it’s because what I have behind me, in terms of sales, in terms of account management, in terms of delivery resources and in terms of, you know, the the technology strengths that’s multi industry that Luxoft has as an organization. When that is presented, to any of the parties whether be a **** or whether it be an industry analysts, there is certainly a level that has surpassed a lot of what they’ve seen historically in the IT services world. So it may be my job to open doors and start conversations but I am where I am not because of me but because of the company and what it represents to the IT services world you know. I am very humbled to be a part of teams that we have many of the industry analysts, sourcing advisers whether it be through off sites within central in Eastern Europe where that’s the were the bulk of our deliveries happening from, whether it be through briefing, after briefing, after inquiry, after inquiry, after face-to-face meetings around the world from Ho Chi Minh City to Seattle. It’s the company that’s representing us to these advisors and these analysts and these journalists that is driving the success (awesome) you know, I’m fortunate to be Who I am but ultimately I’m reflecting what the company stands for, you know, that’s a very humbling position to be in.
GB: Great. So yeah, so Patrick anything that you would like to share from the perspective of Luxoft future plans or some goals that you would like to share with us. Anything that’s not covered in there and this interview.
PC: Yeah I mean on net net I would say our focus will continue to be on our core verticals which is a combination of financial services, automotive, telecom, health care, and life sciences and obviously anchored in areas of the digital world through our horizontal which look at things like IOT, big data, data science, (yes) obviously cloud, obviously DevOps, and agile development and you know even the bleeding edge work machine learning, artificial intelligence, that stuff will have an impact on the way that sourcing and IT services has been viewed, because it sits under this digitalization work. And I would say from a vertical side we will continue to focus on the transformation efforts that our clients are engaged with and in certainly, in other areas like retail, travel, and aviation manufacturing, agriculture, you know, where we’re present and we’re competing in a lot of the other verticals. So we will remain laser focus, Gurdeep, on the higher end of the technology stack. We will continue to build the horizontal anchor in Luxoft Digital and everything both vertically and horizontally will have a consulting element to it, that is creating a partnership relationship with clients you know rather than sending an SOW and then execute your project and I don’t want to see you until the days over. Things are changing, right, (yeah) we are adapting to the collaborative buying process along with the needs of the client.
GB: Yes, that definitely makes sense.
PC: So, we see exciting time ahead.
GB: Yeah, so well thank you for your time and insights Patrick. It was a great pleasure talking to you today.
PC: I appreciate speaking with you Gurdeep and we’re always here to work together.
GB: Yeah sure. Thank you so much, my pleasure
