(Accenture senior MD Mohan Shekhar)

BENGALURU: Move over generalists and make way for the specialists. Accenture , one of the fastest growing IT consulting & outsourcing companies in the world today, is doing a talent transformation in its India operations with the focus on driving specialisation at scale.The company is pushing its employees to take technical career paths in areas like data analytics, machine learning and AI, blockchain, and internet-of-things.“The generalist management cadre has got wiped out in Accenture in the last few years. We needed an innovation culture, subject matter experts. We told our people that they have to be closer to the tech and the industry domain,” Mohan Sekhar, senior managing director and lead – Accenture Advanced Technology Centers in India (ATCI), said.India has over 1.5 lakh employees of Accenture, more than a third of its global strength of 4.4 lakh.“Till five years ago, we were known as the India development centre, good delivery people to work with. We had to change the DNA of the company into an innovation-led organisation,” Sekhar said. The Indian IT industry in general has historically been delivery focused, but there’s now a move to become more innovation focused. Accenture in India may have made the most progress on this front.A year ago, the $35-billion Accenture launched a massive, first-of-its-kind innovation hub in Bengaluru. The facility is populated with talent and tools in the most happening digital areas, including AI, blockchain, security, automation, cloud, as also in a variety of industry areas, such as banking, telecom, and healthcare.Sekhar said some 600 clients had visited the facility over the past year. The centre allows clients to see solutions across the new digital spaces and co-develop new solutions.In fiscal 2017, Accenture’s revenue from the 'new’ – digital, cloud and security services – grew about 30 per cent to $18 billion, accounting for 50 per cent of total revenues. Sekhar said the India leadership has called out performance-related objectives related to the 'new.’ “Every client delivery should have an innovation lead and an automation lead. The innovation lead’s job was on two dimensions – focus on solving business issues for a client and/or give them a competitive advantage,” he said.Sekhar said in the traditional world, it would take five years to implement SAP and then the company would get a ten-year contract to maintain it. “You didn’t have to learn anything new through this period, and you could keep your job. Today’s world is different,” he said. “The same SAP has moved to the new digital. You’ve to be proficient in SAP Leonardo, S/4 Hana. SAP has bought Success Factors in HR and you need to learn that too. SAP implementation is moving to agile. You have to have skills in devops, automation and AI . There are many moving parts within devops and agile,” he said.In fiscal 2017, Accenture invested $935 million in learning and professional development for its employees. Sekhar said the number of employees in India involved in suggesting innovative ideas and the number of ideas themselves had soared over the past few years.