LTIMindtree’s engineering+digital scale offers RCPG firms an alternative to Tier-1 vendors

To win large IT deals of $200 million and more, a provider must offer scale, deep domain expertise, the highest level of tech partnerships, prebuilt tooling, considerable organizational culture understanding, an experienced team, and knowledge of the rapidly evolving emerging tech landscape. In November 2022, LTI and Mindtree solved the scale requirement by merging into a $3.5 billion entity with more than 90,000 employees in 36 countries and 100+ delivery centers. Does the new business perform well across the areas mentioned above and offer capabilities that can help increase its wallet share among joint client accounts?

HFS estimates about 10% of LTIMindtree’s revenue comes from the retail and consumer packaged goods sector (RCPG), making this a sector worth zooming in on to check for representative signs of success for the merger. LTIMindtree has more than 85 RCPG clients across the US, the UK, DACH, France, the Nordics, and Benelux, including five of the top 15 retailers and eight of the top 20 CPG firms. LTIMindtree has 10-year-plus relationships with five of these clients, the longest spanning 22 years, attesting to high customer stickiness.

Partners, platforms, and processes reflect a “big deal” mindset

LTIMindtree is developing a big deal mindset, as illustrated by its partners, platforms, and processes. It now has the highest level of tech partnerships, with firms spanning customer success, cloud, and enterprise apps. These include Salesforce, Adobe, Microsoft, Snowflake, Databricks, Google Cloud Platform, SAP, and Oracle. The combined entity has also developed effective data-oriented platforms and cloud accelerators. For example, FOSFOR is its data commerce and monetization platform that two leading retailers and CPG firms already use. Similarly, Canvas helps in fast-tracking the cloud migration process. LTIMindtree has reached a critical mass to successfully execute a global + local delivery strategy—offshore delivery to contain costs and access to near-shore talent through incubation labs and hackathons. And, for its leading clients, LTIMindtree follows a mature, DevOps-led managed-services framework with mature engagement models, such as revenue sharing.

The joined-up synergies are winning new large deals

The synergies of digital and engineering capabilities and the scale of the outcome of the LTIMindtree merger have helped it win large deals with key clients.

• LTIMindtree became the primary digital transformation partner for Currys. In April 2023, Currys, a leading UK-based retailer, selected LTIMindtree as its primary digital transformation partner, awarding a five-year large contract. The standalone capabilities of LTI or Mindtree would not have been enough for either to win such a digital and engineering transformation-focused deal.
• LTIMindtree became the single owner of a leading fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company’s digital marketing ecosystem. Before the merger, Mindtree was the digital anchor partner for the FMCG firm, and LTI was responsible for managing the end-to-end SAP landscape. The new entity, LTIMindtree, is now responsible for an increased magnitude of work compared to that of the previous individual entities, unifying the digital marketing experience of 70+ brands and 1,600+ digital properties in 100+ countries and across 700+ sites.

The Bottom Line: LTI’s engineering pedigree and Mindtree’s digital background make LTIMindtree a solid managed services provider to win big work; however, future success depends on how well the two entities get along delivering on the ground.

LTIMindtree had integrated the two entities’ customer-facing teams, including business development and sales, partnerships and alliances, and analysts and advisor relations by the end of 2022. The service line offerings, delivery structure, customer channels, and financial operations were integrated in early 2023. However, the on-ground delivery teams will take time to learn each other’s working methods and adapt accordingly. Enterprise leaders will ultimately measure their success by the outcomes of those delivery teams.