We expect our revenue to exceed $1 bn in India: Mona Charif, NTT DATA Services

NTT DATA Services is a leading global business and IT services provider, offering a comprehensive portfolio of services and solutions, with a strong focus on employee engagement, employer branding, and generating demand. Mona Charif, CMO, NTT DATA Services, oversees the marketing efforts in North America, with a particular emphasis on the Indian market, where they have a significant employee base.

NTT DATA Services, having acquired almost 90 companies in the past one decade or so, has experienced impressive growth, with their brand value climbing to become the sixth most valuable and fastest-growing brand. In this exclusive interview with Adgully, Mona Charif sheds light on the factors contributing to this success and the role of marketing and communication strategies in shaping the company’s brand image.

Furthermore, she also discusses NTT DATA’s commitment to corporate social responsibility and sustainability programmes, including their collaboration with the Inspire Institute of Sport (IIS) in Bellary. Through various initiatives and partnerships, NTT DATA aims to make a positive impact on communities and empower individuals. Charif also shares insights into the challenges and opportunities in marketing a company that provides IT services and solutions, as well as how NTT DATA leverages data and analytics to inform their marketing strategies. She discusses the importance of staying updated with marketing trends and technologies and how NTT DATA remains at the forefront of marketing innovations. Excerpts:

What are the marketing plans for India now that the merger has happened? Do you have any special marketing strategy for India?

The primary focus for my part of the business for the North America market is really driving employee engagement and employer branding, which includes recruitment marketing for India, because that is where we have the majority of our employees. But we also want to build understanding and awareness about NTT DATA, and then for the broader company, we do want to generate additional demand in India.

Please give us a brief about the company and its operations.

We are a top 10 global business and IT services’ provider, offering a full stack portfolio of IT business services, consulting services. In fact, NTT DATA’s brand position has climbed up 3 positions to 6th most valuable and fastest growing brand, also our brand value has increased significantly.

And we, we just launched a new purpose statement – to transform businesses for success, to disrupt industries for good and shape a better world for all. So, when you think about NTT DATA, we have 190,000+ professionals around the world, about $30 billion in revenue. In India, we have about 40,000 employees. So, it’s our largest employee concentration outside of our home headquarters of Japan. So, in India our big focus is talent, recruitment marketing, making sure that we drive engagement with our employees and employer branding.

And another big part of what we’re doing in the market is (promoting) India as a market where we sell our services, and we provide data centre services. As a matter of fact, we have 22% market share in the data centre business. We have 11 data centres across India. We’re investing heavily in data centres. We’re investing another $2 billion in data centres over the next few years. So, that’s a big part of the services we provide in the country. We also provide network services, SAP services, and payment services. And in the next few years, we expect our revenue to exceed $1 billion in India. So, it’s an important market for us.

And it’s also a key delivery hub for us, a source of expertise, a source of innovation, and a large employee concentration.

NTT DATA’s brand value has gone up, making it the sixth most valuable and fastest growing brand between 2018 and 2023. What factors have contributed to this impressive growth, and how has your marketing and communication strategy played a role in the company’s current position?

A big part of what we do in India is really our corporate social responsibility and sustainability programmes. Globally, we have impacted a quarter of a million lives, over 240,000 lives. In India specifically, nearly 70 villages have benefited directly from our services, from our CSR programmes. We have empowered over 330 women, and over 1,300 youth. We have some really great programmes like the Inspire Institute of Sport (IIS), which I visited a few months ago; I took a very scenic route out to go visit IIS and spent some time there. I don’t know if you’ve been there, it’s really spectacular what they have done. We’ve got a tonne of NGO partners in India, and a big part of what we’re doing in marketing, is around CSR and the work we are doing, cleaning up beaches and donating to schools, etc.

What is the background information on partnership with IIS?

NTT DATA, in collaboration with Inspire Institute of Sport (IIS), is proud to support the NTT DATA Learning Center & Academics Program. The program in the city of Bellary will receive funding from NTT DATA to continually support student athletes as they secure academic credentials while training for large-scale athletic events.

IIS is home to more than 500 budding athletes, a select few of which are participating in the NTT DATA Learning Center & Academics Program, which will provide space for daily classes and tutoring opportunities on all academic subjects for primary, secondary, undergraduate and graduate students. In addition to a multitude of courses in life skills and the arts, the program will offer studies in holistic mentorship and soft-skills training to a select group of senior-level athletes.

Blind Cricket: NTT DATA supported the top 56 Indian Visually Impaired Cricketers and the 3rd T-20 World Cup Cricket for the Blind. We sponsored a 12-day coaching camp for visually impaired cricketers. The camp was organized in partnership with the Cricket Association for the Blind in India (CABI) and Samarthanam Trust for the Disabled.

Global: And then if I start kind of looking a little more globally, a little more broadly, sports programmes, we have the IndyCar programme that is huge. Next week, I’ll be hosting clients at The Open in the UK. We take advantage of sports programmes not only from a branding perspective, but also to build relationships with clients. A lot of what we do is very focused, we know who we are going after, we know who those clients are and the business we want to grow with them, and so we spend a lot of our energy on building relationships in very focused environments. Our client advisory board is one of those environments where we bring in, we’ve got about 40 members of our client advisory board, about half attend any given meeting, but we spend a lot of energy sharing with them what our plans are and having them help guide our investments and our focus for the future. So, I’d say it’s hospitality, sports programmes – those are the types of things that we use to help build brand awareness. And then of course it’s always the typical things, you know, website, etc.

You acquired a number of companies in the past. How do you ensure a smooth integration of these companies into the overall marketing and brand strategy of NTT DATA Services?

A big part of our growth, especially NTT DATA’s growth outside of Japan, has been through acquisitions. We have acquired 87 companies over the past 15 years.

So, it’s really been quite a bit. From these acquisitions, we have acquired great companies/ talent and built differentiated capabilities. Naming a few:

Apisero, a trusted source of MuleSoft and Salesforce platform solutions for commercial, mid-market and enterprise customers.

Aspirent Consulting partners with the world’s largest organisations to simplify their most complex analytics and digital product development challenges – helping them cut through the complexities that slow progress, stifle innovation and limit growth.

Chainalytics, a recognised global leader in supply chain consulting and managed analytics.

Nexient provides cost-effective software development consulting and software development services.

Postlight, it brings digital strategy, design and engineering to deliver platforms and experiences that drive digital transformation.

Vectorform, a digital transformation and innovation company.

Our primary objective when we acquire these companies is to integrate their IP and their talent into our organisation and to leverage the equity that they have built into their brand and transfer that equity into our brand. So, a big part of that is making sure that the brand migrations for those companies are smooth, that we articulate to the client base that. Let’s say, for example, the Accorio Brand. We’re going to market in the ServiceNow space as NTT DATA. You’ll start seeing NTT DATA more and more. It’s the same talent. It’s the same strength. It’s the same people that you have experienced and the same IP and the same value that you received under a different name.

So, a big part of it is client education, client communication, employee education, employee communication, so that we transfer the equity of the brand into our brand and ensure a smooth transition of the companies.

Could you tell us about your own journey and how you progressed in your career to become the CMO at NTT DATA?

I’ll try to keep the short story short! I began my career in the lowest of the low positions as an intern in EDS, which really was the company that founded the IT services industry. If you think about it today, over 5 million people across India are in the IT services. The guy who founded the industry, Ross Perot, was the person who owned the first company that I joined in the business in the early 90s.

When I got my MBA, I was recruited to Lucent Technologies, spent a little bit of time there, was recruited back to EDS, was part of the purchase by HP. I rebranded the company to HP Enterprise Services, was recruited away from HP Enterprise Services to Dell Services, and spent about four years at Dell Services until NTT DATA bought Dell Services and I came into NTT DATA through that acquisition.

So, I’ve been in and around multiple IT services firms throughout my career. And in every one of those steps, gained additional responsibility, growth opportunities, and kind of worked my way from intern to CMO.

How do you approach the implications of marketing, communications, and corporate social responsibility to create a cohesive and impactful brand image for NTT DATA Services?

It is important to bring all those elements together because the most important manifestation of your brand is your people, your employees. That’s why we value and invest in employee communication and employee engagement so that our employees understand and can represent our brand. And then what they take out into the community and how they represent us in the community is equally important to the brand work that we do and the digital advertising and the analyst relations and the media relations and all those elements; traditional marketing elements that they really all do have, they all do need to kind of integrate together into a cohesive fabric. And that’s what we do. That’s what Ankur Dasgupta, Vice President, APJ Marketing & Communications, and I focus on doing for the organisation.

What are some of the unique challenges you face in marketing a company that provides IT services and solutions? How do you overcome those challenges?

Probably one of the biggest challenges we face is creating differentiation in the industry. And one of the very special things that NTT DATA has that none of our competitors have is the foundation and the DNA of being a Japanese-owned company, where we have long-term strategic vision, we have quality first in everything, respectful values, have extraordinarily high ethical values.

So, really our DNA as a Japanese-based company makes us very special in this industry.

Please share some latest trends in the field of marketing? How do you leverage data and analytics to form your own marketing strategies and practices?

We use data and analytics in almost all our programmes. In our digital advertising, one of the elements we use is intent. We look at the behaviour of our clients and our prospects, of our targets online. We look at what are they researching, where are they going to learn more. And then based on their intent, based on what their behaviour shows that they intend to do, we serve up content directly to them based on their intent. So, we use data and analytics in our programmes, we use it in guiding our strategies in terms of what have we seen demonstrate a strong return on investment and therefore what do we want to continue doing versus stop doing. So, we use data to inform our decisions, we use data to inform our programmes, we use data to inform essentially everything we do. It’s not only part of our company name, but also very much part of the fabric of the way that we do our work.

How do you envision marketing in the Metaverse? What do you have to say about this emerging tech?

NTT DATA has a workplace consulting practice that is actually using Metaverse for helping our clients with their change management programmes, and their employee training programmes. So, to us, it’s not only a marketing tool, it’s actually part of the services that we provide our clients, and one of the elements that we use in our employee change management services.

As a leader in the marketing field, what advice would you give to aspiring marketers who are looking to make an impact in their careers?

I would say to aspiring marketers, probably the most important thing is to be flexible and resilient, because as in my story, the market changes, your company might get bought or sold, you might be given additional opportunities, or you might be given additional assignments. So, be flexible, be resilient, be willing to learn and grow and take on new opportunities. Be willing to do those hard projects that nobody else will take on because they don’t have experience doing it, you’ll get experience by doing it. So, raise your hand, volunteer, ask for additional assignments, be resilient, be a curious observer of the universe and constantly learn.

How do you ensure that you stay up to date with the latest marketing trends and technologies and how do you ensure that NTT remains at the forefront of marketing innovations?

I listen to a lot of podcasts. I read a lot, I consume a lot of information, not just about marketing but about what companies are doing, what trends there are. I start every morning with business news, cable news, network that’s business news oriented. I consume a lot of content. And then for our team, every Thursday we have something called ‘Marketing Deep Dives’, where we share best practices, we share current trends, we share successful implementations or programmes or failed implementations or programmes, because it’s just as important to learn from failures as it is to learn from successes.

Thus, not only am I a consumer of content, we participate with organisations like the IT Services Marketing Association, where I speak a lot on their panels. We also consume a lot of their content and then we bring regular training back to our team to make sure that our NTT DATA marketing team, which is the best marketing team in the industry, continues to learn and grow and is also cutting edge.