Rejig will yield results after 3 quarters, says Wipro CEO

A day after Wipro announced the organisational and management rejig of its information technology (IT) business, TK Kurien, chief executive officer (CEO) of IT business and executive director of Wipro, said the outcome of the move, in terms of accelerated growth, would not be seen before three quarters from the date of its implementation - April 1.

He said the company was done with all the restructuring that had to be done for speedier growth and would now concentrate on its execution to improve customer mining.

“In any organisational restructuring, it is unlikely that you will see the result in the short run.  This is a longer play for us because by doing this (restructuring) we are positioning ourselves for future growth. It is difficult to put a timeframe to it (outcome of organisational rehaul) but any cultural change or organisational change would not yield result before three quarters,” he told reporters via a conference call on Tuesday.

This was the first time Kurien was addressing the media after his appointment as the company’s CEO.

He has been given the new role in the third-largest tech company to turbo-charge growth that has lagged behind peers — Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys — over the last few quarters.

Kurien said as the company moved towards its goal of “higher growth and customer satisfaction”, there would also be realignment of sales force to make them more effective.

Wipro has empowered vertical heads by putting more responsibility on their shoulders but at the same made them accountable for their performance.

Earlier, heads of different geographies were responsible for sales and profitability of their region.  Under the structure, the company has been split into six strategic business units (SBUs), which Kurien said have been given growth targets to be achieved.

“This has been done to go after micro markets in different verticals. We will put sales force to go behind micro markets. Any additional sales force to any vertical will depend on the growth of that vertical,” he said.

Wipro, which has a proportionately smaller share of 27% in the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) segment compared to Infy’s 44% and TCS’ 46%, was looking to grow its share that vertical.

Kurien said in the BFSI and healthcare verticals, it would be share game for the Wipro rather than growth game. Though, he did not reveal how the company would go about it.

“We don’t want only some verticals to grow. We want all verticals to grow but in some verticals (read BFSI and healthcare), where we do not have a big share, we want increase the share so it’s share game in the vertical than growth game,” he said.