Case Study Based Presentation - Emerging Opportunities and Diversification Dilemma in Information Technology (IT) Business. Presented at the ICER BRIC Conference, IIM Bangalore

1. Sudeep K Krishnan, IIM Ahmedabad

2.  Introduction
 Objectives of the study
 Research Methodology
 Aufait – case study
◦ Early days
◦ Growth and restructuring
◦ Diversification dilemma
◦ Identified opportunities
 Results and discussions
 Implications

3.  Understand international business activities of firms
into Information Technology (IT) services from
emerging economies
 Identify factors that drive a firm’s strategy which has
international clients and strong competition in the IT
business sector
 Identify factors that determine success and growth of
firms
 Current views – Industry based view (Porter, 1980),
Resource based view (Barney, 1991)
 Analyze risks, business opportunity exploration and
sustainable growth based on an in-depth case study

4.  In-depth analysis of Aufait Pvt Limited, Kozhikode – IT
company based out of Tier III city
 Research Questions
◦ Was the restructuring of Aufait’s business and focus on newer
areas like Business Process Management (BPM) and
Business Intelligence (BI) intelligent diversification decision
and will that develop a sustainable future for Aufait?
◦ What can be the strategy to promote the new business
activities?
◦ Should operations be carried out from a city like Kozhikode
itself to achieve the projected growth rate?
 Research Methodology

5.  About Aufait – Beginning
 Initial Business Focus
◦ Airline Solutions
◦ Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
◦ Portal development and maintenance
 Clients
 Growth and Re-structuring
 Emerging areas
 Promoting new business areas
 Operating Locations

6. SWOT ANALYSIS

7.  Innovations from the service provider end
 Business Process Management
◦ supporting business process using methods, techniques and
software to design, enact, control and analyse operational
process involving humans, organizations, applications,
documents and other sources of information
◦ Partners with providers like Intalio
 Business Intelligence
◦ skills, processes, technologies, applications and practices
used to support decision making
◦ reporting, online analytical processing, analytics, data mining,
business performance management, benchmarking, text
mining, and predictive analytics
◦ Partnering with Oracle

8.  McFarlans grid (Cash et al, 1988)

10.  Tier III cities
◦ Human Resource Issues
◦ Cost effectiveness
◦ Accessibility to middle east
 Tier I cities
◦ Immense competition
◦ Accessibility to new clients and partners
◦ Infrastructure cost and operating problems
 Multiple cities of operation and maintaining cost
benefits

11.  Implications for budding entrepreneurs and newly
formed organizations – problems studied common to
similar organizations.
 Results replicable
 Emerging economies and intense competition
◦ Factors that drive performance
 Developing strategy for business growth and
sustainable plans
◦ Portfolio of offerings
◦ City of operation
◦ Promoting business offering
 Limitation
◦ Analysis based on a single case study