My Journey As Consultant -6

 Launch of Personal Computers and My Tryst with Information Technology

Ten years into my consulting career, I realised the benefit of building an associate network of professionals with an array of skill-sets which expanded my reach and business portfolio many fold. The IT Industry was on the threshold of path-breaking changes and many small and medium enterprises saw the benefit of introducing IT solutions for greater understanding of their businesses and the marketplaces they served. My tryst with Information Technology gave me the ability to offer business process management tools and demonstrate tangible results to my clients.  

The advent of computers in the Indian market started with mainframe computers even before I finished my IIT course in 1973, and we were exposed to these as part of our course in Computers. I was  quite fascinated and interested in the possibilities that could open up by the use of computers but did not enjoy programming very much. By the time I finished my MBA from IIM Bangalore in 1976, mini-computers were the rage in the market, and this expanded the user market to mid-size companies. However, this still needed computer-trained specialists to program and maintain them. 

In 1983, IBM launched the PC XT  and shortly after its launch many Indian small businessmen bought the PCs, paying upwards of ₹1 lakh apiece; however, they were mostly used by their secretaries as a substitute for typewriters.

In 1984, during the heyday of the mini-computer, I met Antony Xavier, a self-taught computer software guy. He was a postgraduate in Economics, but had a good understanding  of business and financial accounting. He had just joined a cable manufacturing company where I was conducting a diagnostic study of the unit on behalf of a bank. The owners wanted him to help them start a computer services business and were waiting for some mini-computers to arrive. The company deputed Antony to assist me for my study and to provide all the information that I required. He noticed that I was manually doing some tabulations of the financial data given for the last five years and offered to speed up the analysis, using computers that had arrived by then. Thus started a great relationship with him and his team and  together we were able to offer computer-related services to many small businesses where they already possessed a PC XT or were willing to hire the facility provided by Antony and his team for their use. 

Officially, he became my computer associate  and  his services became part of our consulting work where use of computers became an important tool in running many small businesses. 

Soon Antony decided to leave the company he had helped set up, and started his own outfit with a PC XT facility and developed a Financial Accounting package specifically designed for small business application, which became a big hit  in the Hyderabad market. At one point he had more than 250 regular customers who were using this software aptly named FACTS (short for Financial Accounting Software). Many of these customers were those I had identified during the course of my business development efforts and on many occasions my consulting work led to implementing FACT as a first step to introducing the benefit of using PCs to these small businesses. 

By this time, many locally-assembled PCs were available in the Indian market. Prices of new PCs also dropped to make them affordable, and banks were  generous in funding. In many cases, we were able to get the clients to extend the use of PCs for their material accounting system and, using floppy diskettes, we were able to move the data between two computers running the material accounting and accounting packages. During this period I also started noticing that the use of manpower required to run the operations started reducing, which was a big boon since getting well-trained people to work for these small businesses was always an issue. Later, when I moved to work with large corporates, I could use this  experience effectively while implementing Process Reengineering projects.

Once Antony became part of my associate network, we started collaborating to give composite solutions to many clients and all data analysis  part  of my work was done by his team based on the framework I had given to them; this speeded up our work as it also helped many clients get a better information system established. 

We had a good run for this model between 1984 and 1992. Around 1991, the Government of India accepted the Mandal Commission report and this started a great deal of social unrest across the country. We found that many of our small business clients started losing business in Hyderabad and were not able to pay our service charges. The uncertainty  lasted for so long that Antony realised that, with his talent, he could do better if he migrated to the USA. In 1992 he got a good offer from a USA-based firm near New York City and decided to wind up his business and move on. And I lost the support of a very good associate. 

But soon after he had left India I also realised that there was not much future in focusing on small business clients and I started looking for medium to large clients who could afford my services when the economy opened up. During this period  most of my work also involved helping clients adopt information technology creatively using concepts like Business Process Reengineering, Lean Management and Theory of Constraints and I had to work with new IT specialists who were very happy to piggyback on my consulting work to implement IT solutions. Between 1992 and 2009, when I finally decided to hang up my consulting boots, was also the period the IT industry itself was evolving rapidly with new technologies, and the advent of the internet completely transformed the business environment globally. India was no exception to this trend and this provided more opportunities for me  to work with IT specialists to offer innovative solutions.

Well, I don’t want to move fast into my journey before narrating the progressive changes that were forced upon me in the intervening period, starting with my decision to move away from being a private limited company director to an Independent Freelance Consultant. And subsequently building an associate network that came together to work on specific assignments based on a client's business context and created a business model which sustained the relationships with associates in a mutually beneficial and fair manner while giving value to clients.