Wipro restructures to reduce dependence on US – Times of India

BENGALURU: Wipro‘s new CEO Thierry Delaporte is overhauling the organisational structure — reducing the number of business units, putting the focus on geographies instead of industry verticals, giving more powers to P&L owners, and defining the ownership of performance metrics. The new structure, experts said, resemble Accenture’s and Capgemini’s operating models.
Delaporte, in an email to employees, said Wipro’s growth has for long been largely dependent on the US market. “It is important that we broad base our growth. The new model seeks to achieve just this. Besides ensuring adequate sector and domain focus in our go-to-market and execution, the new operating model will help drive growth in non-US markets,” he said.
Delaporte also said “the current complex delivery structure with multiple delivery units will be replaced by a simple delivery model that will yield economies of scale.”
TOI had reported earlier this month that Delaporte was planning a major restructuring along these lines.
Effective January 1, Wipro will bury the current structure of seven strategic business units (SBUs), service lines and nine geographies, and instead have four strategic market units (SMUs) and two global business lines (GBLs). The SMUs are organised by markets and GBLs by capabilities. While the SMUs will own the P&Ls, delivery and practices will be aligned with GBLs. The four SMUs are called Americas 1, Americas 2, Europe, and APMEA (Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa).
Americas 1 will include healthcare & medical devices, consumer goods & life sciences, retail, transportation & services, communication, media & infomation services, tech products & platforms and Latin America. Americas 2 will include banking, Citibank, securities, IB & insurance, manufacturing, hi-tech, energy & utilities, and Canada.
Europe will consist of six countries/regions – UK and Ireland, Switzerland, Germany, Benelux, Nordics and Southern Europe. APMEA will include six countries / regions as well – ANZ, India, Middle East, South East Asia, Japan and Africa. The SMUs in Europe and APMEA will be responsible for all industry sectors in these regions.
Wipro president Srini Pallia will lead Americas 1, while senior VP Angan Guha will head Americas 2. N S Bala will be incharge of APMEA. The leader for Europe will be appointed in the coming weeks.
Among global business lines, one is called iDEAS (Integrated Digital, Engineering & Application Services) and will include service lines – domain and consulting, applications & data, engineering and R&D, and Wipro Digital. The other is called iCORE, and includes cloud infrastructure, digital operations, risk & enterprise cyber security services.
Wipro Digital president Rajan Kohli will lead iDEAS. Nagendra Bandaru, president, will lead iCORE.
The SMU and GBL leaders, along with functional heads, will report to Delaporte.
Wipro has created a new role of chief growth officer, whose role will be to drive large deals and strengthen relationships with partners, besides overseeing marketing, advisor/analyst relationships, sales excellence and sales enablement. The position is expected to be filled soon. Wipro will also appoint a CTO.
Rod Bourgeois, head of research in US-based DeepDive Equity Research, said the new structure focused on geographies can be successful as long as the organisation doesn’t lose any ability to deliver domain or industry expertise to clients.
Jatin Dalal will continue as CFO, Saurabh Govil as HR head, Deepak Acharya as legal head, and Ajay Bhaskar as strategy and transformation head. Sanjeev Singh, who is the business head for India, will transition to run operations which will include the role of chief information officer, quality, talent transformation, talent acquisition, and global immigration management services.
Wipro presidents Bhanumurthy BM and Anand Padmanabhan will retire over the next few quarters. Milan Rao, president, and Bill Stith, SVP, will leave the organisation on December 31. “The structural changes I outline today are critical to accelerate our growth and reclaim our leadership position in the pantheon of global IT services companies,” Delaporte said.