Wipro to eliminate divisions, simplify structure

Employees of Wipro at an Indian facility

Outsourcing major Wipro Ltd said it will replace the current way in which it has structured its business by reorienting it along two core themes — product-related services, and infrastructure-related services.

Earlier, Wipro used to divide its services into seven verticals and five capabilities.

The seven verticals included segments like manufacturing, telecom, consumer products, financial services, energy, health and technology; while the five capabilities involved application services, analytics, digital, engineering and infrastructure.

Now, these 12 divisions will be packaged into two customer-facing ‘business lines’ — iCORE, which will house all the infrastructure-related services, and iDEAS, which will be home to all the product-related services.

As a result, iCORE will include what used to be called cloud infrastructure, cyber security and ‘digital operations’.

iDEAS will include ‘digital services’, consulting, applications, data analytics and engineering.

The above structure will be what the customer will see, but the company will have a different organizational structure internally.

INTERNAL REORIENTATION

The internal structure will be tailored more towards efficient delivery and for measuring productivity, growth and profitability.

The internal structure, which will be known as Strategic Market Units, will be based largely on geographies.

However, unlike earlier, when Wipro used to divide its business into three geographic units, there will be four geographic units this time.

This is because Americas has been further divided into Americas 1 and Americas 2.

Americas 1 will be home to all the high-growth industries, while Americas 2 will be home to the more stable, mature industries.

Americas 1 will contain Healthcare & Medical Devices, Consumer Goods & Lifesciences, Retail, Transportation & Services, Communication, Media & Info services and Tech Products & Platforms.

Americas 2 will contain Banking, Securities, Investment Banking &
Insurance, Manufacturing, Hi-tech and Energy & Utilities.

In addition, Latin America will be looked after by the Americas 1 team, while the whole of Canadian market will be taken care of by the Americas 2 team.

In addition to these, there will be one strategic market unit or SMU for Europe, and one for the rest of the world.

“The SMUs are organised by markets and [customer-facing] GBLs by capabilities. While the SMUs will own the P&Ls, delivery and practices will be aligned with GBLs,” it said.

The changes will be implemented before Jan 1.

This will mean a shuffling of designations across the organization, especially at the managerial levels.

The company did not say whether it expects to reduce or increase the number of managerial staff as a result of this change to its business and operations structure.

Wipro’s statement