Is Work ethics poor in India ?

Recently I had recommended a US company to outsource their ruby project to a company in Pune. Sadly the Pune vendor after taking 1000 dollars as advance and after repeated followups was only able to start their project after 45 days. Am hoping that they will now deliver the project on time and maybe also compensate in some ways for their reckless attitude earlier.

I think the standard of ethics at large is going down in business, specially in small businesses. Intentionally at least people do not wish to cheat, but that is how it ends up due to unprofessional execution of commitments. Sometimes the vendors are at fault, sometimes the clients want to exploit and many times both of them err simultaneously with poor communication exchange.

I have played both the roles of a vendor and more lately as a client and I can see both the sides.

Over the years when I was taking projects, I too have made quite a few mistakes and must have screwed up or delayed a few projects for several reasons. It is easy to blame the client, when things go wrong, and for clients it is easy to blame the vendor, however both should be mature enough to realize that they need to work as a team and create a win-win for both, they can only win if the other party wins.

The problem with clients is that usually they get busy with their own activities and assume that the software vendor will be able to handover the desired results with their minimal intervention. That is a very poor assumption, when chalking a project schedule, a very important factor is to set up regular review sessions where both parties are intensely discussing what is required from each other. I also wish the client would be concerned about the profitability factors of the vendor and give respect to their estimations , rather than trying to squeeze and exploit the vendors who needs projects badly.

From the vendor perspective, I think there are two clear problems. One of them is that they are too technology obsessed...they just care to learn new features or try to impress technically, but lack the necessary soft skills of communication, business insights , customer service angles or even usability among several others . They are just too worried to get out of the current project and jump on to the next, they would do well by giving 100% to one project and make sure that every project of theirs is better than the previous one.

Second problem usually is with the vendor's team. Usually the owner is trying to do everything himself, pre-sales, post-sales, finance, admin etc. and is usually seen to be firefighting. And if they have partners, usually the partners are all technologists and lack the complimentary skills and diversity desired in a team. I think it is difficult to acquire new skills then to partner with people with complimentary skills. I don't think one should start business together just because of friendship, but rather make new friends with complimentary skills.

And yes, before committing a project, vendors must definitely ensure that they have the right resources in place, and also a backup team just in case the assigned resources discontinue with them. This is one of the biggest risks of projects, unfortunately small vendors cannot afford to have a bench of professionals like large companies do, but still they should have friends in the industry to save their reputation.

This is a big subject, please add your views as to how work ethics and professional standards can be raised in the industry such that there is a win-win situation. Please share the mistakes you have made, how you are now dealing it differently, so others can learn from you and not repeat them.

Regards,
Ajay Sanghani
CEO, ITVidya.com