We are a young company by culture and the DNA of our organization is about 'how do we keep innovating?' So ideas are always welcome. We also have formal programmes, including one called ‘Syntelovation,’ an award programme that recognises teams that provide the best innovative solutions to our customers. That is something that isn't evaluated by merely people within the organization. We invite our clients to be part of the jury and the awards are given on the basis of the innovation contributing directly to the customer's revenues and profit.

We enable our clients' IT team to support THEIR business. Therefore the question is, how do we help our client's IT team so that it helps their business. Syntelovation is very clearly part of this initiative. Internally, within Syntel, we keep looking at new ideas. In a services company this is often in the form of a process innovation that can add to our top line or bottom line.

This is an area where we actually run portals, such as our 'Idea Transform' to capture ideas from any employee who has one. That is then scrutinised from the perspective of whether that can substantially improve our processes and so on.

For example, in managing infrastructure, we look at what we've been doing, the experience we've accumulated and see if we can use that to help our customers in better managing their infrastructure. Second on the application side, we run a lot of programmes, and with our centres of excellence, we work very closely with our customers to test or pilot something within Syntel something that will eventually be used by the customers.

This every once in a while leads to frameworks, processes and even tools that can be authentically taken to the market and customised for the clients.

Globally the way the markets are today, with the economic turmoil, there is this constant demand for more with less. Here, there are many areas where CIOs can contribute with innovation, helping their own business units help their clients get more for less. This is where the pressure is much higher even on CIOs to focus on projects that can help organizations tap business opportunities.