Consulting Magazine - November 2017

Persistent Systems helps cus- tomers in their journey to become software-driven in their business with a goal to be a well-respected technology company focused on delivering best-in-class innovative solutions to its customers and partners. Sunder Sarangan, Chief Marketing Officer, sat down with Consulting to discuss the firm’s performance.

Consulting: What were the main factors that contributed to your firm’s growth? Sarangan: Our growth is the result of the vibrant technology advancement and how that is continuously transforming all companies, their business models, and even how we have viewed industries. Today, data, digital, or Io T represent a significant opportunity as much as they are disruptive threats as we become more software-driven. This is driving our business growth, where customers value our expertise in building software and in new technologies as their own journeys become more and more software driven.

Consulting: How is this year shaping up for your firm?

Sarangan: With the emergence of
new technologies, the effort required
for doing the same work is going
down—traditional effort-based bill-
ing models in the Consulting or Ser-
vices industry have limitations. On
the other hand, we see that the mar-
ket for new technologies continues to
be robust with digital transformation
being the essence of this shift. We as
a company had anticipated this shift
and have organized ourselves to tran-
sition from an effort-centric business
and focus on these opportunities.

Consulting: Where do you see the most opportunities? Sarangan: We believe that data, digital and IoT, together define the building blocks for a software driven business. We see this as an important nexus of technologies for the future. We have been making significant investments to form partnerships, build solutions and accelerators, as well as frameworks for enterprises to become software-driven. At the same time, digital transformation remains a continuous journey. One time fixes will not suffice. We foresee many waves of digital or technol-ogy-led transformation to be creating growth opportunities. In terms of industries, we are seeing most growth today in U.S. Healthcare and in financial services globally.

Consulting: What would you say are your firm’s biggest challenges in 2018?

Sarangan: There is a significant
change in the way people are using
and building technology. Due to
new technologies in the market, it
takes less effort and less time to get
the same things done. Thus, most
consulting or technology services,
are going to be consumed different-
ly. This is a business model chal-
lenge for all consulting and services
companies on how to sell and how
to deliver profitably in this envi-
ronment. That said, the work to be
done or the opportunity for us only
continues to grow and the pace of
innovation in the technology land-
scape makes it very exciting.

Consulting: What does being named one of Consulting’s Fastest Growing Firms mean to your firm, your employees and your clients? Sarangan: This recognition is a strong validation of how software is truly eating the world, and how the world of consulting is also seeing the growth of software-driven companies like us.