T&M Services can drive the overall Engineering Services Companies sharper!

Globally the technology sector is being monitored for its all pervasiveness.The tech sector is usually
perceived as the IT industry and its hardware,software services and peripherals to the core computing
platforms.Therefore the Engineering component of technology sector is counted as the IT.There is no
harm in doing that as Engineering Services are technological in nature and if simplicity is to be maintained in drawing the numbers,it makes sense to do that way.However the outsourcing of Enterprise and its relevance to countries like India,there is a case to look closely IT services exports and Business Process Management Exports.Industry circles feel that Engineering Services Export may turn out to be the outlier within various segments under IT sector.

The Engineering Services sector is itself quite broad.And various engineering services like Application Development, and Maintenance types are getting commodities and priced very genetically in the market place.The IT industry defines and names Mechanical,Embedded,Product Life Cycle Management and Software product as the sub segments.Now our submission is to look
the T&M industry as the specialized T&M services (software,application development etc) as part of
Engineering Services.T&M calibration services,metrology and synchronization will also be its part.

If T&M services become officially part of the Engineering Services spectrum,the higher growth attributed to it will really shine distinctly and it will benefit the T&M industry immensely.This highlighting of T&M services as part of Engineering Services Export was done in this blog,few years
back too.May be the time for this idea has now come,with the arrival of several 1Billion Dollar Engg
services business breaking out as the service companies.

There is time to rethink and reboot T&M services from this angle.

Framework for startup CEO for new age T&M systems company,!

Recently over the last few weeks I happened to meet and mentor range of startup CEOs in the
Tech industry.These new age CEOs are themselves tech savvy,young and very qualified at the
Ivy League schools.Naturally they are ambitious and want to grow rapidly like any other services
company to become "Unicorns".At times my understanding of their business model was poor(due
to lack of my own awareness) or sheer incomprehension of market place where they are wishing
to operate/operating.

As I thought thru and reflected on my awareness and the B2B operating environment of selling
I was approaching a framework roughly these companies could adopt.My basic parameters to work
was the following:

B2B nature of Selling
High technology,software,services and 3rd party jigs,fixtures and miscellany
Market Govt,PSU and Corporate plus International
Sales Cycle  Medium to Long (After design win can go mainstream in small volume)
Capex intensive but rationalization for balancing opex
Decision Making Unit.   Usually involves Head, CFO Ctry Operations or support manager
Both PreSales and PostSales support needed to sustain interest in Vendor
Funnel Picking selectively rather than Funnel Percolation
Excellent Commercial understanding required, Bidding Process thoroughness
Accounts Recievable processes in Govt,Corporate and International Areas
CRM Analytics, Big Data application understanding
New Age technology and Norms
VC funding sources including Crowdfunding


Looking from the probable owner or the CEO viewpoint,who manages this startup, I guesstimated
a Test Automation and Integration service co will very much approximate to what we have listed
out here.The head of these type of companies usually wear many hats and crowded web browser
is there on the desk.

Following list of tools and softwares for his day to day work will be handy

Collaboration Tool.          Stack

CRM.                                Sales force or Zoho

GitHub.                               Track the techies work

Analytics dashboard.             Hub spot

Some other tools for specific project management may be required,but above is very much covering
the good extent.I feel such IT infrastructure will be good for a T&M solutions Company CEO.

Let me know your comments and queries.

Digital Enterprises of today are T&M groundswell !

Modern Management Gurus are increasingly positioning the new age enterprises for A fast Digitalisation and analytics will be the characteristics of these Organisations.They are more likely
to use the power of so called Design Thinking,AI and vast deployment of Sensors of all kind.So the
T&M technologies and services will be used in these applications in novel ways!

Leadership will be using the power of Algorithms and sensors in combo.Sensors will be part of the Process of IoT connections and M2M interfaces.These markets of connections will be big.Industry
experts expect the markets to be in several Trillions Dollar opportunities.Obviously these will be based on many elements talking to each other and phases of Design,Deployment and Maintenance
aspects of these networks will need lot of portable T&M and systems.

The new age enterprises will try to give customers the end to end experience.Ultimately the parameters of cost,convenience and systemic process will be monitored by the Marketeers.To deliver
good experience of systems all measurement,monitoring etc will be handled by T&M technologies
General and Customised.Here again lot of refining of standard as well as Customised T&M systems
will be deployed.

As life and Organisations become project based,the T&M deployed will also transformed.Exciting
Times will dawn when the likes of Smart Cities and Smart Villages will come.Generation of new ideas for these entities will trigger new kind of T&M as well.

T&M contribution through Services in Offset and Call Drop nuisance!

A very positive move has been spearheaded by the Defense Minister by announcing the Services and Skills inclusion in the mandatory 30 percent part to be locally generated,as part of Procurement contracts now onwards.The minister is very pragmatic in the sense that the content of offset can't be summarily discussed as a ploy to window dress for any illegal,or unethical practice.Offset can and should include lot of incremental business to the local Indian companies,where the efficient and effective use of overseas hardware can happen through these services.

The local content of software,engineering services,third party hardware of jigs,fixtures and training on technology delivered through local Personnels can be very useful for the upkeep and serviceability
of Defence Systems.Incidentally this will have to necessarily include lot of T&M hardware,Services,skills of high technology and project management.This can all accrue to small scale,technopreneur driven local T&M companies.Most of them are highly accomplished people in their field and they can contribute immensely to the overall mission of "Make in India" objectives.
The Govt and Industry should do close collaboration and help Indigenisation in this program.

I am a little disappointed to see there is still lack of industry commitment on solving the call drop issue.The Government is wanting operators to improve infrastructure and use of better processes through available spectrum sharing and trading etc.But a vital and critical aspect is totally ignored
and that part is taking the help of Professional T&M service companies and solving through QoS
angle.Lets all remember the good quality telecom infrastructure includes the appropriate T&M equipment,services and automation.That will ensure proper pro-active quality gaps and how to resolve by better network roll outs.A side advantage will be increased revenues to the test industry,and it's critical role in resolving this nagging issue!

2016 will be Indias disruption technology year and augurs well for T&M

The year2016 in India will see several technology disruptions the way it is deployed in services,make in India programs,smart cities development,Hitech manufacturing and public delivery of services.It will also see India take some heavy investments coming to fruition as far as Strategic key infrastructure projects undertaken since the new Government at the center came into being in Mid
2014.Hopefully and more confidently,the initiatives and investments will result in better productive
numbers for GDP growth too.As more and more public initiatives and policy narratives yield results,the background contribution of T&M technologies will be appreciated,and there will be encouragement to use More T&M tools and systems in latter half of run up to 2021.

Major 2016 visibility remains for manufacturing Smartphones,Smart Cities development,4G deployment throughout India,Digital India driving public services and exploitation of Aadhar based data services for general common man.Railways will see rollout of 400 stations on Wifi network and bigger players taking lead in 4G across India.One million mobile users with sizable smartphone percentage will be another catalyst to new age eServices through the Smart Networks.Likewise the
Startup culture in our major IT centers will see growth as well as shakeout,and so IoT Cloud etc will
be subjected to newer stress testing and test automation.Networks will be created throughout 2016 for
health,education and Auto connectivity and effective Rail communication.

Also India will be more than halfway to have a GPS system of its own,and seven satellites required for the project completion will be through in 2016.Shared services like taxi sharing and other social
Apps based things will be commonplace here.This will give encouragement to small entrepreneurs and also trigger need to do LAN and WAN optimization and testing.Most of the Smartphone will be
carrying useful apps,so the network upkeep and regulations conformity will be needed.

This is expected to be the year of disruptive technologies and rollout of networks in Education,Health,Communication,Defense and Space sectors and which will further need new tools and T&M technologies as the background support.Hopefully we will also see better figures for T&M tools and platforms in the business stat also.Happy tech year 2016..... 

Lack of T&M orientation in Projects costing India dearly!

There are various projects in the country which are experiencing either stickiness in the implementation of them successfully,or lacking the compliance requirement.Many of the projects are also facing the regulatory bottlenecks.If we see precisely the cause behind the cause,the problem lies
with the Quality checks not enforced,or the relevant measures were missing,or the metrics was not
followed and backed by testing and measurement.All this gets traced to non availability of right tools and testers for QoS work needed there.Lets illustrate this by way of few currently valid challenges faced by India.

Take for example so called Call Drop problem in the Indian Telecom Network.Everybody knows,or should know the Quality of a telecom network is ultimately product of good Network Components and good quality CRM interfaces.But the metrics of good hardware and services can be done by good T&M systems setup used for checking the system quality.If we lack either the availability of good T&M hardware or the quality skilled T&M manpower ,we will never be able to get total network conformance and miss out on signal integrity etc.This is exactly what is happening and we are resorting to finger pointing at each other instead.

Likewise there are various projects in Defense,Aerospace and Engineering which are suffering time delays because somehow we don't have the T&M labs available to the user organisation,or the need of quality is not appreciated.As a result of which we are not able to move ahead with the project or complete the same with quality compliance overall.Even large scale procurements of Hitech equipment gets severely delayed,as our own readiness is not there,because we cannot prepare the RFQs because the user or the DRDO don't have proper testing facility,or the Quality related specs are not prepared.

In telecom specially we are not able to resolve till date the issue of establishing quality labs for malware checking,as no good facility is available with the DoT or any of their associate organisation.This has kept lot of telecom equipment procurement in limbo,as we can't check the acceptance parameters of the systems imported from outside sources,particularly from China for instance.

Actually we need reorientation in our thinking first where the T&M related investment in setting up labs or the test centers is considered as an investment,and not routine expenditure.All the parties in the value chain-the user to Finance and Tech Support all look to T&M technology as a resource and not an afterthought activity.

What can be viable options for ICT industry to grow?

Right now in our country the ability of our planners to take decision for risky pursuits is getting
a little difficult because of civil and political system.But the fact is the time is running out fast as the
Industry is getting more important and critical ,both compared to oil and gas industry size,as well
as the mounting size of imports.The foreign exchange outgo is increasing and in next few years imports may as well touch 400 Billion $ in next fewer years! This is not a happy scenario both because of hardening $ as well as our limited exports for past several quarters.

There are the short term as well as more long term options which can be exercised as far as the ICT
Industry is concerned.We must liberalize and open the sub sectors for all types of investments-Global
as well as the Domestic entrepreneurs.We have to break up the industry hardware into three distinct
categories: Devices, Equipment and Complete Network and Systems.Both the Digital India and Make
in. India programs should be liberally expanded in the scope,so that faster import of FDI can happen.
FDI and its attended manufacturing rollout here will ensure on ground activity and capital formation.
As a target all states and the Deity must give eClearances for setting up both 100pct and less than 100 pct FDI participation.FDI must be tagged for 100 pct,if there is case of multi use of ICT in Telecom,Railways,Defense and Higher Research and Aerospace.A one page application for FIPB
should be done for immediate approval.There is no need for even waiting beyond user ministry vetting time.

Necessarily all these projects can be under various state Govt STP or SEZ schemes including the
Semiconductor projects.Certain state Governments have set up these projects on the basis of their own initiatives.More and more such projects should be encouraged so the investment from private
sector can pour in.If the systems can be imported into countries which will improve quality of public
infrastructure then these can be approved without delay.Such imports will help improve domestic
revenues and indirectly be helpful in paying off to Global vendors!

Human Resource Development is another area of concern in ICT industry in India.The industry can
tie up with Global professional Organisations and domestic vendors for ongoing supplying to the new
Organisations.This can be part of the initial application where the requirement of such skills can be identified and if any Visa needed to import the project manpower temporarily.Ease of doing the business should be both really easy as well as Simple.

We will discuss in next blog some more specifics as far as Defense Manufacturing is concerned.