Why Digital transformation are harder to execute for Europe than US?

 

I found some stark differences of working style in both the regions’ people. Most of the Indian IT companies are trying to consolidate their position in Europe after a level of saturation in US, UK, Australia and other English speaking countries, and probably most of them are struggling in Europe, though they executed projects for English speaking countries.

Most of the projects including Digital Transformations even I got to chance to work on in my career were for US based customers. However, recently I got chance to work with some European giants. I thought to share my learnings & experiences after directly working with some of the big European accounts.

Communication barrier - As I pointed above, Indian IT companies succeeded for most part in English speaking countries, in executing the project to completion. One of the prominent reason I think is since English is sort of primary language for all Indian companies. However, for most of the European countries English is not even secondary language, hence there is large communication barrier that comes into play here. It needs to be planned and mitigated very carefully. However, I feel Indian IT companies are not paying needed attention to it. Though looks like a small thing but diligent efforts should be made to make employees of Indian IT companies sensitive about this thing and they should be ask to be very clear, slow-paced and unambiguous in their thoughts when communicating with European in people. And following basic protocol, like sending written recaps, getting reverse feedbacks etc.

Requirement gathering – To overcome the communication barrier, role of Business Analyst becomes really important. However, challenge I have seen is that companies are trying to train programmers on Digital platforms from vanilla technology but not much efforts are put on BAs. And when requirements has to be taken, same BA with no CMS trainings are asked to gather the requirements and that is first step in pushing project towards failure. Most of the requirements can be met by libraries in built in the Digital Suite, however since BAs are not aware they take requirements that is not complying to what is already there but rather do unnecessary customization of the product. With BA with correct skillset in place, I think we can easily mitigate the barrier of communication. One of the common problems with BAs not trained in CMS is that they would take requirements only on the delivery side of the system (correct for vanilla systems) but skip to capture the requirement on authoring side. This gap is hard to bridge later on, hence sooner the better. Also, if companies can have local BA having good fluency on both English and local language, that can be even more beneficial.

Also, I have seen that the European customers rely completely on Indian companies even to get their requirements formed, which is in contrast with American clients who believes in creating their own detailed requirement first before asking companies to support them. This again throws challenge for Indian IT companies.

Onsite presence – American customers as far as I have seen insist for robust onsite presence (at least 20:80), in turn, they don’t have to directly rely on offshore folks directly. However, Indian companies don’t deploy that much onsite strength for European customer. I had tried to understand the reason from one of the account manager of a large Indian MNC for this. A bizarre reason he gave me was that distance between Europe and India is very less hence we can have anybody fly as per demand. But I don’t think that works, when communication is a barrier, telephonic communication becomes even more difficult. Hence, rather more onsite presence is needed for European customers.

Cultural differences – Europe has totally different culture than US, most of the key Indian IT people have worked in US culture, hence assumes that it would be similar in Europe. However, there is a sea of difference between both the cultures. Companies in Europe are probably one of the most employee friendly companies, its normal to take 1 year parental leave (even for daddies), long vacations is a norm, people are very family oriented, and don’t believe in working at stretched hours. Hence, you have to adjust and plan accordingly. Even some American companies follow such polices, but it’s probably not that religious with these things.

Looks like Indian IT companies are still learning to work with European customers, however I am sure they might have already learnt these things and might already be applying solution for it. Conclusively, I would like to point out that these are just my personal thought that I gathered with my experience. But would want to learn from your comments and feedbacks, if you felt same or otherwise. Thank you!