Wipro, TCS to restructure bench. Prepping up for digital wave.

With an aim to build in-house expert set, Indian IT firms are now planning to bring back the bench. Recent reports suggest that leading IT companies have been spending heavily on external consultants.

Some of the most prominent companies had been cutting down on the bench, aiming to boost operational efficiency and a margin boost. With an amplifying need of trained experts, the companies are now bringing the bench back.

Wipro CEO TK Kurein told the business daily that "We will need a little bit of a bench for digital.” The company plans to train around 10,000 individuals on digital technologies next month.

Not just Wipro, but Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) had also revealed that is was increasing its hiring target to 75,000 for the year, and hoped to exceed its goal of training 100,000 employees on digital technologies in FY16.

Earlier, TCS chief executive N Chandrasekaran, in a statement had said, "The reason for raising the hiring target for the year is to be able to have a little bit of a bench."

"If you look at the results for the last few quarters, you will see payments to third-party consultants have been increasing. Companies have acknowledged that they cannot control this cost until they have the talent in-house," an analyst with a Mumbai-based brokerage firm informed the business daily.

The move has come after the companies saw an increase in third party payments for the training of employees. TCS observed a rise of 15% year-over-year in the fees paid to external consultants. Infosys too had noticed an amplification of 55% year-over-year in its payments to the technical sub-contractors.

HCL Technologies CEO Anant Gupta told ET, "The shift we are trying to see is from services being consumed or being bought as competency-based capability (time and material) and maybe fast forward 3-5 years it will move to outcome. So, we (are looking to) move from capability to output and outcome."

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