Mphasis CEO Nitin Rakesh on navigating the evolving business landscape

As the business world continues to rapidly evolve, leaders must be agile and innovative, leveraging technology to stay competitive. Nitin Rakesh, CEO and Managing Director of Mphasis — the Bengaluru-based IT company, believes that success in today's complex and diverse workplaces requires a combination of technical competence and emotional intelligence, empathy, and cultural competency.

Drawing on his wealth of experience in the IT services industry, Nitin shares exclusive insights on navigating change, driving digital transformation, and achieving sustainable growth.  

Here are the edited excerpts.

How do you envision your role evolving in the coming years and beyond, especially considering the rapidly changing business landscape?

As the business landscape continues to change at a rapid pace, it's critical for leaders to adapt quickly to unexpected challenges and leverage technology to drive innovation and competitiveness. However, being a successful leader in today's globally interconnected world requires more than just technical competence. 

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Emotional intelligence, empathy, and cultural competency are also essential qualities needed to navigate complex and diverse workplaces. At Mphasis, my priority is always the well-being of our employees, while keeping our clients at the centre of everything we do. We focus on maintaining a strong workplace culture and connections among employees while also going the extra mile for our clients.

What do you anticipate as the biggest opportunities and challenges for your organisation in the year 2023?

The upcoming year will be focused on navigating uncertainties on a macro level while capitalising on opportunities on a micro level. We are optimistic that the pipelines we have built around vendor consolidation will start to translate into significant contract value in the coming quarter. We also expect to grow our top accounts and sustain our market share gains, despite already reaching an all-time high in revenue.

To support our investments in farming and strategic hunting, we plan to continue investing in growth across our chosen business and technology segments. However, we also recognise that the business environment is constantly evolving and that new technologies are emerging. Companies that resist adapting to these changes and persist in investing in legacy solutions will face challenges in 2023, while those that make targeted investments in the right kind of strategy will continue to see positive outcomes.

As IT leaders, we must continue to innovate and improve our opportunities to stay ahead of the competition. The biggest challenge we anticipate is the need to keep up with new technologies while ensuring that our investments are strategic and targeted. However, we believe that by maintaining our focus on operational efficiency and productivity, we will be able to overcome these challenges and capitalise on the opportunities that come our way.

How is Mphasis leveraging digital transformation to drive business growth and adapt to the changing market?

At Mphasis, we recognise the importance of digital transformation in driving business growth and adapting to the changing market. We have introduced and enabled the execution of the Zero Cost Transformation methodology, which allows us to significantly reduce run costs while accelerating digital transformation with cloud and cognitive technologies for our clients. Our Front2BackTM and Zero Cost Transformation frameworks allow us to play across the tech value chain and deliver an integrated portfolio of consulting, design, development, zero-cost production support, and service operations for better customer experiences, speed, and agility at a reduced cost of ownership.

We also understand that cloud migration is a trend that has not fully played out across industries. We have been focusing on areas such as cloud adoption, data engineering, and strategic data assets, as well as areas such as cyber security, customer experience, and support transformation. These areas will be the focus for enterprises in the coming time ahead, and we are well-equipped to facilitate accelerated transformation and support in these domains.

How do you plan to sustain company growth and overcome market challenges in the long term?

At Mphasis, we are taking a purposeful and bold approach to transformation, leveraging our expertise in engineering to drive growth in all areas of our business. Our investments in markets, technology teams, and domains have enabled us to build a strong portfolio of robust industry solutions and a marquee client base, which insulates us from market challenges. Our "Tribes and Squads" model has helped us scale our ability to service a growing pipeline and close more deals by consistently evolving our solutions through the adoption of new technology trends, tools, and methodologies. We are focused on delivering value to our clients and adopting new technologies at scale and with speed, which we believe is essential for sustainable long-term growth.

How are you addressing the shift towards remote work and flexible work arrangements?

Our approach to the future of work is encapsulated in the statement, ‘Hybrid First: Work from anywhere, collaborate in the office’. We will continue to embrace this hybrid model and reconfigure our office workspaces where possible to create collaborative workspaces that foster a culture of collaboration with clients as well as within our teams. In this customized model of ‘Hybrid First,’ we are placing our trust in our teams to be able to discern the best way to deliver on client essentials while balancing their individual needs and remaining true to the organization’s culture of customer-centricity. To operationalize this model, we offer collaboration workspaces in the form of design studios, workshop conference rooms, and experience centres for client collaboration across facilities and geographies. Additionally, we will conduct workshops and training to communicate guidelines and expectations around this new way of working.

This interview is part of an exclusive series that featured CEOs and MDs of top organisations sharing their perspectives on the ever-evolving business landscape and the future of work. Browse all the interviews here!