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T.
M. Arunkumar
Long before information technology
became a way of life with Indian businesses, one organisation,
Tata Consultancy Services, had already stationed itself in
the forefront of research and development. It was in 1981
that TCS set up its first R&D centre.
The services of the centre are offered
through any one of three ways. The first of these is the provision
of tools for TCS’s business activities in all its branches.
The second service is ensuring that the tools mature into
products, which can then be sold worldwide. The third service
takes place when an activity within the R&D centre reaches
a certain level of maturity. The activity is then moved out
of the centre and developed into a TCS business group. This
ensures that the size of the R&D team remains between
150 and 200 people.
There can be no greater proof
of the fact that TCS encourages its employees to grow to their
full capacities than that the manufacturing group of TCS originated
from the R&D centre. This desire to grow has fuelled the
company’s growth. According to Dr Mathai Joseph, executive
director, Tata Research Development and Design Centre, "Every
time this happens, we grow new capabilities and new directions
of research."
Along the way there have been other
changes in the company. Ten years ago R&D focused on finding
solutions to individual problems, and concentrated its energies
on a few technologies. In the last five years the management,
having discovered that this strategy was not productive enough,
has begun to look at solutions that can have widespread applications.
A replicable solution can be implemented in a wider context.
The change in focus was prompted by
an annual review conducted by the top management. Other experts,
including heads of national institutions, etc, assisted in
the process. Says Dr Joseph, "They review the R&D
and make recommendations in terms of duration or terms of
work." Apart from that, it is up to the R&D to demonstrate
to the top management that its assets are now commercially
viable. "There is a challenge there; we have to convince
the top management that there is something worthwhile to be
done and that the returns will be worth this investment."
Research adds tremendously to the success
of the company. Dr Joseph explains this concept by giving
examples of two factors that stand in the way of operational
success. One of these factors is cost in terms of salaries,
allowances, etc. The second factor is productivity, in terms
of the number of people needed to complete an assignment and
the duration for which these people would be needed. A reduction
in any of these would help the organisation to improve its
profit margins.
Research can address these costs and
seek ways to reduce them. Dr Joseph gives an example. "You
can de-skill tasks so that they can be done in a more routine
way. The expert knowledge of a few experts can then be shared
across different engagements. People-related costs can be
reduced by using fewer people, less time or less expensive
people."
This goal can be achieved by working
on tools that will help the company to reengineer existing
software for clients. The way to do this is to speed up the
process, reduce its manual content. It can also be done by
producing software faster. "If you look at the really
good top productivity of software programmers, on an average,
it is not more than 15 to 20 lines of program per day, on
a sustained basis. If you can increase that by a factor of
five to 20, you can change the pace dramatically," says
Dr Joseph. These are the challenges that confront R&D
in the business operations of an IT services company.
The success of research on a long-term
basis depends on the willingness of the company to promote
and encourage study. Dr Joseph says that there are many subjects
that do not fit TCS’s framework. This includes open-ended
research that cannot be time bound. "We fund such long-range
research at educational institutions in India, the US and
the UK. This gives us knowledge about how an area is developing."
This research is not restricted to
the corporate R&D centre; it also takes place in the service
and industry practices. TCS spends around 4 per cent of its
annual revenue on R&D. "The research may help develop
a product for the financial services or the healthcare industry,"
says Dr Joseph.
TCS is particularly proud of its achievements
in research. It has made a lot of improvements in its tools
and products. Most of these improvements have been prompted
by customer expectations, changes in the industrial scenario,
and the adaptations necessitated by these changes. Besides,
TCS has also taken pains to look into new ways of producing
software, where productivity, reusability and other issues
affecting software assume importance.
In such a scenario, it becomes very
important to work with other industry groups to find out what
the prevalent trends in research are and then proceed in that
direction. Many of TCS’s tools in the applied artificial intelligence
area have been commended by the industry. "We are now
working on the next generation of such tools. What is the
market going to be requiring in the future? What can we do
that will take us there?" The answers to these questions
will determine the next course of action.
However, conducting research is not
the sole goal of the R&D department. It is equally important
to safeguard those inventions in India, the US and other countries
where the product is to be marketed. TCS expects to patent,
on an average, 15 products a year. The company has already
established a process whereby patent applications are regularly
filed in the US and in India. The intellectual property rights
of products other than inventions are protected through copyrights.
This is done through the corporate legal office in Mumbai
and through patent lawyers either in the US or in India.
Other articles on reasearch and
development efforts across the Tata Group:
Uploaded on August 25, 2003
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