SATYAM – A STORY TO BE HEARD AND KEEP MOVING….

When I had heard Satyam news a few days back, the first thing that came to my mind was “How would Indians react to this, in an already over sensitive market”.
At the same time it struck to me, how my old engineering college batch mate (one of the director’s of Maytas) and Son of erstwhile Satyam CEO Ramalinga Raju would face this family ignominy.

These were the thoughts that came to me immediately because of my some connection with names Satyam and Maytas (ironically both are mirror images and went down at same time). But that was not all in my mind. Being part of www.BPOVoice.com , the very next thing that started bothering me was the level of agony that the clients of Satyam would go through and thus its impact on outsourcing industry in India. I guess that was a short term fear without any logic as its difficult to practically remove or reduce outsourcing project from India, be it Software outsourcing, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) or for that matter Knowledge or Legal Process Outsourcing( KPO, LPO). The only and agreeable reason for the same is the corporate governance being shown by other companies in past 15 years and the level of quality work that Indian companies have being doing for really long.

If I have to be arrogant, I would say, it’s difficult to find out similar level of skills set and quality elsewhere with the price levels that Indian companies work with.

For the last 15 years India has been the most respected and adorable outsourcing destination. All those youngsters who would have started outsourcing in India from USA and Europe etc 15 years back have seen this industry growing and maturing to the extent , that their psyche do not even allow them to think of any alternative outsourcing destination.

Such stories keep happening be it US , India or any part of Europe etc, The Confidence Index would still be maintained higher with the commitment levels and conviction of 100’s of other software companies in India who still are respected for their work ethics and corporate governance.

I might be politically incorrect, but still I can challenge that no company keep its financial books as clean as they should have been. This is a widely accepted fact and even one of the CFO’s surveys in USA has proved the same, where most of the CFO’s accepted, cooking of the financial books either because of CEOs or because of their self imposed strategy. With the argument mentioned before, I do not mean Satyam is right in what they have done, because no such act is appreciated which goes against stake holders and investors in the corporate world.

At the same time, I would highlight, a thief is a thief when he is caught (or surrenders). All those reading this also have small (or who knows big) thief in you, playing around with your financial numbers. I would just advice to play safe and follow the ethics as much as possible because game of manipulation is a big trap and eventually other Satyam might come out from any part of the world especially where economy is suffering badly in most of the developed countries.

Satyam fiasco will not hamper growth of outsourcing business in India. This is just a lesson (good one) for lot of Indian companies as well as foreign clients to make sure that Financial Auditors are doing their job properly and they don’t have to blindly believe even the big brands in the market. Audit the Auditors……….and just try to be cheerful in this New Year. One bad news should not stop us from doing good business in this wonderful year ahead.

Happy New Year to all and Happy Outsourcing…..