Executive Viewpoint
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Anjali is a technology executive and SVP of Engineering at Perforce Software, a private equity owned portfolio company. She shares her views about how globalization is driving digital transformation among ISV’s.
Q: How has increased digital transformation changed your perspective or vision of new product development?
Perforce develops tools and applications that enable DevOps at scale for large enterprises. Perforce’s innovation strategy is therefore based on identifying bigger industry trends and addressing those trends by building products and features to expand existing relationships or target new verticals. Trends can be identified by either a) analysing where large enterprises are heading and then innovating to take advantage of any opportunity that can be of value for them or, b) Identifying Industries which are growing – e.g., automotive industry is going through a paradigm shift as they are moving to software-based manufacturing.
Q: Private equity-owned ISVs have to keep innovating to accelerate revenue growth and reduce costs. What role does globalization play in driving innovation?
Innovation doesn’t always have to lead to increased investments. Instead, it involves prioritising within the current cost structure. Perforce prioritizes investments based on the overall company product portfolio strategy, growth expectations and shifts resources accordingly to execute the plan.
The essence of Perforce’s globalization strategy lies in keeping Costs in balance while finding the right type of Talent that is required. Diversification of talent is equally important to hedge risks associated with globalization as well as having 24/7 development coverage. The ideal globalization strategy is to assess which are the products it is building, identifying the corresponding skillsets required and then determining the top talent hotspots possessing the scale that is necessary.
Typically, organisations can have low cost centres in Asia or Eastern Europe and high cost centres in Western Europe/US. LATAM is also coming up as an attractive location to build delivery capabilities. Russia and China have a reputation for great digital talent. However, due to geo-political and language barriers these are not ideal locations to set up centres. In India, Bangalore and Hyderabad have become costlier locations and talent retention is a challenge now. Comparatively, Pune and other tier two cities such as Baroda and Jaipur have become attractive locations.
Perforce is setting up a new center in Pune, India and ramping up its Estonia center. With increasing expansion Perforce might look to setup delivery centre in Poland or the Czech Republic. It might be interesting having a LATAM delivery center in the future, but only if it come through a strategic acquisition.
Q: From your experience of managing distributed engineering teams, how has your experience been in managing smaller delivery centres (e.g., Estonia centre)?
Organisations need to hire strong engineering leaders for its delivery centres, irrespective of its size, to be site leaders in order to keep engineering operations smooth and people motivated. This is essential to build products which deliver enriching customer experience. Perforce has strong site leaders for its centres in the US, UK, Israel, and Estonia, who are integral to the functioning of the integrated delivery model.
In addition, Perforce builds and coaches teams on high-touch and empowering culture that comes from making sure everybody in the organisation understands why they are important and how do they contribute to the success of the overall mission. This also leads to high performance delivery teams.
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About Anjali Arora
As SVP of Engineering, Anjali is responsible for product development across Perforce solutions. She has 27 years of experience leading global teams in dynamic environments from private equity growth to publicly traded companies, including Oracle, Allscripts, Rocket Software, and CA Technologies (now Broadcom). A champion for women in technology, Anjali is a high-energy leader with a history of bringing innovative products to market.
Anjali holds a B.A. from St. Stephen’s College in India and a master’s degree in computer applications from the University of Delhi.
