NIIT plans ambitious growth plan

After having grown at a frenetic pace for the last six years (revenues have grown seven times in this period) India’s leading IT solutions major, NIIT, has set itself a very ambitious target. And, very appropriately, it has called the plan for this target "Fast Forward". The plan involves a major restructuring of its organisational structure and business processes. According to Mr Rajendra Pawar, chairman of NIIT, the plan, which will ensure that the company reaches a target of Rs. 10,000 crore in the next six years, has taken nine months to mature.

The plan has been framed to develop, articulate and roll out an action plan that helps NIIT implement its growth strategy. The process will involve a close examination of the company’s business processes and organisation structure.

NIIT, which currently focuses on identifying key imperatives for accelerating growth in the new economy, has put in place a new structure for this ambitious plan. Centre to this plan is the concept of "independent business units", with a corporate centre to monitor the overall plan and pursue long-term strategies. The corporate center will have a few highly experienced heads of staff functions and will act as brains trust of the organisation.

The independent business unit heads would be accountable to the NIIT board for strategy, targets and performance and will be equipped with an advisory board. Each of the IBUs will have their own staff functions like human resources, finance and commercial. To be constituted largely by NIIT members, the advisory board will be responsible for providing external inputs and cross business linkages. Each advisory board will thus have members from outside of that business unit. These members are expected to enhance the synergey unique to the NIIT business model and enforce the crucial outside-in perspective. The plan envisages splitting the total business into the following independent business units:

• education and training
• project K 12, which will pursue opportunities in IT education for school children
• software solutions, which has been further geographically broken into five independent business units of US, Europe, Japan, Asia-Pacific and India.
• knowledge solutions
• a financial services vertical

Mr. Pawar will directly oversee Horizon 3 initiatives, which is conceiving activities to be done in the next 3-5 years which businesses don’t find it exciting to nurture at the moment.