In Conversation with  VP Srivastava, Consultant: IoT Business Unit, Tata Communications and Ex-Chief IT Tata Steel. VP comes with 40+ years of experience in managing Digital Solutions at Tata Steel ranging from formulation of Digital Strategy, through Execution and Running Digital Systems Operations.

Ved Prakash Srivastava

• Earlier applications that were procured were all custom built. The hardware came with software solutions and operating platforms. Once a procurement was made, buyers were married to the solution for 10 years or more. So each procurement had to be weighed in the light of such long term returns, flexibility and vendor support.
• What has changed now is that there are myriad solutions. Hardware and software options can be considered independently. The total cost of ownership and barriers of entry are low. Given a large number of solutions – one can choose between higher support by choosing to procure from a single vendor or choose the ‘best in class’ solution which may mean buying solutions from more than one vendor. This may mean sacrificing some amount of interoperability and single-point support.  
• Solutions that are procured by a company are either critical or support solutions. Critical are those that run the business- such as hardware-software platforms that run ATMs or other financial services. Because these run the business themselves, and if they fail, the business stops. Support solutions are those that aid the business. These are enablers such as predictive analytics. They are essential, but business does not stop if they fail. There are even less critical operations, such as say payroll processing, which happens only once a month.
• Over the years, the volume of critical solutions have increased, and organizations have to rely more and more on IT to run the business. Both components – the time duration of the procurement decision, and the business impact of the decision have to be weighed in while making a purchase decision.

These and more insights you never find in the public discourse around Sales and Buying in this candid episode of The Buyer Side Chat.

Run time – 37.18 mins.