Companies must pursue innovation, focus on becoming sustainable: Wipro CEO

Companies must accelerate efforts to innovate and reinvent their approach to talent while focusing on becoming more efficient, sustainable, and responsible in this decade of technology, Wipro CEO Thierry Delaporte said on Wednesday.

Firms, across industries and markets, are intensifying efforts on digital transformation to solve their business problems, with technology acting as an "enabler and problem solver", and this is expected to gain momentum in coming years, Delaporte said.

Speaking at Nasscom Technology and Leadership Forum 2022, Delaporte noted that the client experience is now going beyond the technical aspects of a solution, onto social and environmental aspects as well.

Companies, he said, can no longer exist just as profit centres, and they must act quickly to innovate, improve, reinvent approach to talent, and invest in bold inorganic approaches, while focusing on becoming efficient, sustainable, and responsible.

On the fundamental changes expected in technology and services landscape over the next decade or'techade', Delaporte termed the current times "exciting" and the one that "promises to get more challenging and complex", and said Wipro, which is geared to problem solving, finds it energising.

"My view is that companies across industries and in almost all markets, are accelerating their efforts to become digital businesses. The fact is that becoming digital has less to do with technology and more, a lot more, to do with business processes, business mindset.

"You're becoming digital to solve consumer problems and business problems not technology problems. Technology is the problem solver here, it is an enabler," he said adding that it will gain traction in the coming years.

Citing estimates that forecast the average tenure of companies on the S&P 500 coming down to 12 years by 2027, from 24 years previously, he said firms will have to keep up and stay relevant by leveraging technology, innovation, and radical-thinking.

"This means speed and creative innovation. This means reinventing our approach to talent. This means investment in constant improvements, investment in bold inorganic approaches. The way things have been done in the past in our industry, and frankly elsewhere, will need to radically shift, this is my conviction," he said.

Companies can no longer exist as profit centres, and profit makers, he said adding: "I am convinced that we must become more efficient, more sustainable, and more responsible."

Business and technology needs are coming together, Delaporte said and added that partners are bringing products and solutions to the equation.

"So together with our partners, including many startups, big and small, we are helping address the complexity of the ecosystem. We are orchestrating new growth areas for our clients," Delaporte said during a 'fireside chat'.

Wipro sees tremendous opportunity in its partnerships, and is massively committed to these alliances, he pointed out.

"We see tremendous opportunity in our partnerships...With companies like AWS, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, SAP...Specifically, in the areas of cloud led modernisation, Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, industry and complex specific digital solutions, cloud-native architecture, we see fantastic traction with our partners, but all of this needs commitment, flexibility, investment, and that's what we are doing," he said.

Wipro is positioning itself as 'value orchestrator' to its clients.

"Today, 38 per cent of our current order book is with our key alliance partners. My view, in two years from now, it will be over 50 per cent of our order book, So, that shows definitely the strength of our relationship, the speed of the growth that we get together. And in the nature of the way, we are working as an orchestrator with this ecosystem," he said.

Wipro is fostering a culture of radical thinking and allowing teams to challenge themselves on creative innovation, even if some of their bets fail to take off despite sincere efforts, he said.

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