Wipro reorganises IT business structure

Wipro Technologies has realigned its organisational structure to accelerate growth.

Wipro started the process earlier this year by deciding on a single chief executive officer instead of the earlier joint model with an aim of creating a 'simpler organisational structure'.

It appointed an insider, T K Kurien, as CEO of the information technology business from February 1.

The company has created six strategic business units from the earlier seven.

These are energy and utility; manufacturing and hi-tech; media and telecom; retail, consumer packaged goods, transportation and government; pharmaceutical, healthcare, life sciences and services (pharma and HLS); and finance solutions, which comprises the banking, securities and insurance divisions.

A new division, natural resources has been added to its E&U SBU, to focus on metals and mineral industries. The SBU is managed by Anand Padmanabhan.

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The company has not made any change in business heads for finance solutions, manufacturing and hi-tech, and media and telecom.

It has merged two of its earlier SBUs, manufacturing and technology, to create a new SBU called manufacturing and hi-tech, to be led by N S Bala.

All these changes take effect from April 1.

The company has also said that strategy and merger and acquisition functions are being combined under Rishad Premji, son of chairman Azim Premji.

He will functionally report to chief financial officer Suresh Senapaty and for business lines to Kurien.

In a communique to employees, Kurien said the technology SBU had synergies across automotive and consumer electronics, storage and semiconductor manufacturers.

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"As such, we will integrate the technology SBU and the erstwhile manufacturing SBU to create a powerhouse which will focus on both the industry areas and will position us for faster and synergistic growth," he said.

The pharma and life sciences business, currently under the manufacturing SBU, would be consolidated into a pharmaceutical, healthcare, life sciences and service businesses (pharma and HLS) SBU.

The company appointed its senior vice-president of enterprise application services, Sangita Singh, head of this SBU. She will replace Rajiv Shah, who is leaving the company.

G K Prasanna, who led the technology SBU for Wipro, will take over as the head of the eco-energy business division, while Anand Sankaran will continue to lead the infotech business division.

The company is expected to make the next level organisation structure within the manufacturing and hi-tech, and pharma and healthcare SBUs over the next week.

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Hoped-for aims

"With the change in the environment, there is a need for a bolder, simpler and more agile organisational structure.

"The model that we have created now is centred on the customer and designed for swift, impeccable execution and single-point accountability. The bottomline, customers can expect a nimbler and more proactive Wipro to deliver value-driven business outcomes to them," Kurien said in a statement.

The company said in order to strengthen its application services solutions, the existing service lines providing application development and testing services would be consolidated into a single one, 'Business Application Services', to include packaged implementation, testing and business technology services, and headed by Srinivas Pallia.

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Wipro is also planning to consolidate its analytics businesses into a new service line focused on analytics, business intelligence, information management, performance management and data/text mining.

This new service line would be headed by K R Sanjiv.

"Wipro is trying to bring focus and better accountability, which got defused in the earlier structure.

"The company has reduced the number of interfaces for the customers and empowered these adequately to take fast decisions, while at the same time wanting them to be more accountable," said Amneet Singh, VP (global sourcing), Everest Group.

Emerging markets will now be managed under a country-focused structure.

This will include Latin America, Canada, France, Germany and Asia-Pacific (including Japan and China). Global sales and operations officer Martha Bejar will work closely with all the business units over the next two months to enable transition to the new structure.